[".  Paut,  at  Athens. 

Shelf. 


^  PRINCETON.    N.  J. 


BX  5133   .S42  1878 
Shakspeare,  Charles 
St.  Paul  at  Athens: 
spiritual  Christianity  in 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS: 


SPIRITUAL  CHRISTIANITY  IN  RELATION  TO  SOME 
ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  THOUGHT. 


NINE  SEEMONS 

PREACHED  IN  ST.  STEPHEN'S  CHURCH,  WESTBOURNE  PARK. 


CHARLES  ""SHAKSPEARE,  B.  A. 

ASSISTANT  CURATE. 


WITH  A  PREFACE  BY  THE  REV.  CANON  FARRAR,  D.D. 


NEW  YORK: 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS, 
743  and  745  Broadway. 


Grant,  Faiees  &  Rodgees,  Peintees, 
52  &  54  North  Sixth  Street,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 


PREFACE. 


A  VERY  few  pages  of  the  following  volume  will  suffice 
to  convince  tlie  thouglitful  reader  that  Mr.  Shakspeare 
stands  in  need  of  no  other  introduction  than  such  as  is 
furnished  by  his  own  ability  and  eloquence.  It  is  not 
through  any  presumption  of  mine  that  I  am  induced  to 
write  these  few  words  of  preface,  nor  am  I  so  vain  as 
to  suppose  that  the  Sermons  will  gain  in  any  way  by 
my  recommendation.  My  connection  with  them  is 
simply  as  follows : — Having  heard  them  very  highly 
spoken  of,  and  feeling  a  deep  interest  in  the  subject 
of  which  they  treat,  I  obtained  from  Mr.  Shakspeare  s 
ready  kindness  the  pleasure  of  reading  them  in  manu- 
script; and  when  I  had  read  them  I  could  not  but 
think  it  a  great  pity  that  discourses  of  such  high 
merit,  and  on  which  so  much  thought  and  labor  had 
been  expended,  should  be  of  no  advantage  beyond  the 
narrow  circle  of  those  that  heard  them.  I  therefore 
suggested  to  the  author  that  he  should  publish  them, 
and  it  is  only  in  compliance  with  an  earnest  request 
that  I  take  the  liberty  of  detaining  the  reader  from 
the  volume  itself. 


vi 


PREFACE. 


One  of  the  many  advantages  of  the  ordinance  of 
preaching  is  its  wonderful  elasticity ;  the  great  variety 
of  subjects  which  sermons  may  embrace,  and  the  wide 
diversities  of  treatment  which  they  permit.  It  is 
obvious  that  the  following  Sermons  would  be  ill- 
adapted  to  a  miscellaneous  and  uneducated  congrega- 
tion ;  but  they  were  found  to  be  deeply  interesting  and 
extremely  useful  to  the  comparatively  small  but  highly 
cultivated  audience  to  which  they  were  addressed. 
Those  who  have  watched  the  current  of  recent  English 
literature, — those  who  are  often  thrown  into  the  com- 
pany of  men  of  letters  and  men  of  science,  —  can 
hardly  be  unaware  of  the  deep  dissatisfaction  with 
which  sermons  are  often  regarded,  and  of  the  utter 
scorn  with  which  they  are  denounced.  The  reason  is 
obvious.  The  many  whose  faith  has  been  shaken  by 
the  contradiction  between  the  assertions  of  the  pulpit 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  equally  confident  assertions 
of  science  and  criticism  on  the  other,  and  who,  from  the 
nature  of  the  case,  cannot  often  hear  from  the  pulpit  a 
single  word  of  sympathy  with  them  in  their  vague 
bewilderment,  or  a  single  serious  attempt  to  overthrow, 
by  research  and  reasoning,  the  difficulties  by  which 
they  are  constantly  disturbed,  are  apt  to  declare  that 
the  clergy  either  wilfully  ignore  the  opinions  and  reason- 
ings of  all  but  their  own  circles,  or  have  nothing  worth 
notice  to  ofier  in  alleviation  of  their  doubts.  It  is  there- 
fore erroneously  asserted  that  the  clergy  are  living  by 
choice  in  a  fool's  paradise  of  assumed  infallibility,  and 
that  they  think  to  escape  their  adversaries  by  simply 
burying  their  heads  in  the  sand.    I  need  not  say  that 


PREFACE. 


Vll 


sucti  complaints  seem  to  me  to  be  founded  in  miscon- 
ception. It  cannot,  I  think,  be  alleged  with  any  truth 
that  the  clergy  have  refused  to  enter  into  the  field 
of  historic  and  textual  criticism,  or  that  they  have 
omitted  to  show  what  they  conceive  to  be  the  correla- 
tion between  the  truths  of  the  Catholic  religion  and 
the  certain  discoveries  of  philosophy  and  science.  And 
there  are  surely  men  among  the  ranks  both  of  Angli- 
can and  Nonconformist  divines  whose  wealth  of  know- 
ledge, and  power  of  intellect,  and  unquestioned  sin- 
cerity, and  frank  willingness  to  give  their  reasons  for 
the  faith  that  is  in  them,  are  a  sufficient  proof  that 
they  are  not  likely  as  a  body  to  follow  the  cheap  and 
contemptible  method  of  getting  rid  of  all  controversy 
by  simply  ignoring  its  existence.  Yet  even  such 
thinkers  as  these,  soon  find  by  experience  that  ordi- 
nary sermons  to  ordinary  congregations  are  not  by  any 
means  desirable  vehicles  for  those  controversies  which 
deal  with  the  most  fundamental  verities  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  The  sceptical  metaphysician,  the  scientific 
doubter,  the  Positivist,  the  Secularist,  the  Agnostic, 
should  remember  that  the  thoughts  which  might  be 
well  suited  to  meet  their  arguments,  and  that  the  dis- 
cussion,— if  not  the  perfect  refutation, — which  they 
have  a  right  to  demand  from  those  to  whom  has  been 
intrusted,  in  a  more  special  manner  the  sacred  deposit 
ol  Christian  doctrine,  would  be  wholly  unsuited  to  the 
poor,  the  ignorant,  the  sufi'ering,  the  uneducated,  the 
dull ;  to  those  who  would  not  even  understand  the 
technicalities  of  an  argument ;  to  those  who  have  never 
known  the  agony  of  a  doubt ;  to  those  who  derive  the 


viii 


PREFACE. 


continuance  of  their  spiritual  life  from  faithful  worship 
and  the  Holy  Communion;  to  those  who  have  found  in 
the  truths  of  Christianity  their  sole  support  and  their 
sole  consolation  during  many  weary  years.  What  to 
the  sceptic  might  seem  to  be  weighty  thoughts  and  in- 
teresting suggestions,  would  sound  to  simple  worship- 
pers like  the  vain  babblings  of  scholastic  disputation. 
What  the  former  might  repudiate  as  the  dogmatism  of 
ignorance,  or  despise  as  the  commonplaces  of  exhortation 
may  come  to  the  latter  like  the  music  of  heaven.  The 
former  might  be  inclined  to  turn  with  an  almost  con- 
temptuous weariness  from  discourses  which  are  often  to 
the  latter  the  very  bread  of  life.  Even  if  it  were  right 
for  a  Christian  minister  to  forget  for  a  moment  that  the 
vast  majority  of  his  audience  is  composed  of  believing 
Christians, — even  if  it  were  right  for  him  to  trouble 
and  becloud  their  minds  with  objections  to  which  he 
himself  attaches  no  importance,  and  of  which  they  have 
never  even  heard, — yet  all  the  conditions  under  which 
sermons  are  ordinarily  preached  in  our  parish  churches, 
while  most  admirably  adapted  for  doctrine,  for  reproof, 
for  correction,  for  instruction  in  righteousness,  are  sin- 
gularly adverse  to  sustained  argument  or  intricate 
inquiry. 

Those,  therefore,  who  really  wish  to  see  how  the 
clergy  meet  the  opposition  of  scepticism,  will,  find 
many  books  written  with  this  purpose,  but  can  hardly 
expect  to  hear  sermons  addressed  to  them  on  topics 
such  as  these.  But,  for  this  very  reason,  it  is  desirable 
that  those  of  the  clergy  who  have  the  requisite  know- 
ledge and  ability  should  not  miss  the  opportunity  for 


PREFACE. 


ix 


Christian  apologetics,  when  it  is  fairly  presented  to 
them  in  the  ordinary  course  of  their  ministry.  Such 
Was  the  opportunity  which  occurred  to  Mr.  Shakspeare 
in  some  afternoon  sermons  at  St.  Stephen's,  Westbourne 
Park,  and  which  he  utilised  to  the  best  of  his  power, 
by  the  effort  to  counteract — not  by  angry  denunciation, 
but  by  thoughtful  argument — the  prevalent  tendency 
to  Agnosticism.  It  was  one  of  his  objects  to  endeavour 
to  demonstrate,  as  Professor  Max  Mtiller  has  also  shown 
in  his  recent  Hibbert  Lectures,  that  the  elements  of 
faith  and  duty,  even  apart  from  external  revelation,  are 
immanent  in  the  consciousness  of  mankind;  but  with 
this  difference,  that  Professor  Max  Mtiller  was  speak- 
ing in  a  secular  place,*  to  a  secular  audience,  whereas 
Mr.  Shakspeare,  preaching  in  the  pulpit  of  a  church, 
might  fairly  start  with  the  assumption  that  those  whom 
he  was  addressing  were  more  than  willing  to  grant  far 
wider  premises  than  could  be  assumed  in  an  argument 
which  was  purely  scientific,  and  in  which  it  was  neces- 
sary to  prove,  or  at  the  very  least  to  show  the  absolute 
reasonableness  of,  the  most  elementary  principles  of 
faith. 

There  are  some  so-called  religious  critics  who — 
being  utterly  unconscious  of  everything  that  is  going  on 
in  the  world  of  secular  literature — have  so  little  either 
of  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent,  or  the  harmlessness  of 
the  dove,  that  with  unreasoning  fury  they  attack  their 
best  friends  as  though  they  were  their  deadliest  ene- 


*  The  Chapter  House  of  Westminster  Abbey  belongs  to  the  Government, 
and  leave  to  use  it  has  to  be  obtained,  not  from  the  Dean  and  Chapter,  but 
from  the  First  Commissioner  of  the  Board  of  Works. 


X 


PREFACE. 


mies.  To  such  persons  a  writer  immediately  becomes 
an  object  of  suspicion  if  he  so  much  as  quotes  a  senti- 
ment, however  noble,  from  a  known  skeptic,  without 
flinging  a  stone,  or  fulminating  an  anathema.  To 
such  critics  a  writer  like  Mr.  Shakspeare  does  not 
appeal.    To  them  he  might  fairly  say — 

"  Sis  BUS,  sis  divus,  sum  caltha  et  non  tibi  spiro." 

The  subjects  with  which  he  is  dealing  are  far  too 
solemn  to  admit  of  their  being  made  turbid  by  the 
wretched  pettinesses  of  party  controversy.  He  well 
knew  that  those  whom  he  wished  to  influence  would 
be  simply  repelled  by  an  assumed  right  to  silence 
them  with  current  conventionalities,  and  by  the  afiec- 
tation  either  of  a  serene  unconsciousness  of  their 
difficulties,  or  a  pious  terror  of  their  opinions.  If  it  be 
true — as  is  so  constantly  asserted  and  so  loudly  be- 
wailed—  that  men  of  the  highest  intellect  and  the 
profoundest  thought  are  getting  more  and  more  alie- 
nated from  Christianity — at  any  rate,  in  the  forms 
under  which  it  is  most  often  presented  to  them — then 
it  is  at  least  certain  that  they  will  never  attend  to  any 
argument  which  shows  an  entire  unacquaintance  with 
their  position,  or  with  the  literature  in  which  it  is  set 
forth,  and  that  they  will  never  listen  to  any  voice 
which  does  not  address  them  in  the  language  of  manly 
frankness,  and  respectful  sympathy.  This  is  the  tone 
of  the  following  sermons.  They  are  the  work  of  one 
who  is  competent  by  learning  and  culture  to  deal  with 
the  subjects  of  which  he  speaks;  and  of  one  who  in 
the  fairness  and  moderation  of  his  tone  has  tried  to  catch 


PREFACE. 


xi 


something  of  the  spirit  of  that  great  Apostle  of  whom 
he  is  writing.  St.  Paul  at  Ephesus  was  not  a  blas- 
phemer of  the  goddess  Artemis;*  at  Athens  he  uttered 
no  fierce  denunciation  even  of  a  decadent  and  despair- 
ing philosophy.  He  strove  to  overthrow  the  monstrous 
complications  of  Paganism,  by  preaching  with  all  love 
and  forbearance  the  Kevelation  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ ; 
and  he  tried  to  meet  the  noblest  instincts  of  the  Stoic 
and  the  Epicurean,  by  showing  them  that  the  God 
who  had  sent  him  forth  to  preach  Jesus  and  the 
Kesurrection,  was  the  Unknown  God  of  their  unsuc- 
cessful search,  and  of  their  unconscious  praise.  Mr. 
Shakspeare  has  the  very  highest  authority  for  his  fear- 
lessness and  for  his  sympathy;  and  in  days  when  so 
many  volumes  of  sermons  find  a  favourable  reception 
even  when  they  are  very  thin  in  substance  and  unori- 
ginal in  expression,  I  cannot  doubt  that  readers  will 
be  found  to  welcome  discourses  which  have  a  special 
object,  and  which  are  so  well  adapted  as  these  are  to 
repay  a  thoughtful  perusal.  On  whatever  grounds  any 
may  object  to  them,  no  one,  I  think,  can  possibly  say 
that  they  are  nothing  more  than  ''another  wave  on 
the  Dead  Sea  of  Commonplace." 

I  will  only  add  that  I  must,  of  course,  disclaim  all 
responsibility  for  special  phrases  and  sentiments  which 
occur  in  the  following  sermons.  They  contain  some 
things  with  which  I  disagree,  and  many  expressions 
which  I  could  not  myself  have  used.  The  same  might 
probably  be  said  by  the  readers  of  almost  any  religious 


•  Acts  xix.  37. 


Xll 


PREFACE. 


work  which  showed  the  faintest  gleam  of  independence 
and  originality.  On  many  questions,  and  possibly  even 
on  some  points  of  deep  importance,  I  differ  from  the 
author.  The  gratitude  which  I  have  ventured  to 
express  for  the  general  design  of  the  sermons,  and  for 
the  way  in  which  the  design  has  been  worked  out,  will 
not,  of  course,  be  interpreted  to  mean  an  identity  of 
my  own  opinions  with  those  of  the  writer,  or  an  un- 
qualified acceptance  of  all  that  he  has  said. 

F.  W.  FAEEAE. 

SwANAGE,  September,  1878. 


TO 

JAMES  SWIFT  DICKSON,  ES(2., 

THE 

DEAR   AND    BELOVED   FRIEND    OF  YOUTH, 
TO  WHOSE 
SYMPATHY,  ENCOURAGEMENT,  AND  AID 
IS  DUE 

A   BOUNDLESS  DEBT  OF  GRATITUDE  AND  AFFECTION, 

THIS  BOOK 

IS   DEDICATED  BY 

THE  AUTHOR. 

**0  mihi  prceteritos  referat  si  yiipiter  annosT 

— Virgil  {ALti.  viii.  560). 


2 


CONTENTS. 


CHAP. 

INTRODUCTION 
I.    THE  CITY  AND  THE  APOSTLE 
n.  CULTURE  AND  FAITH 

III.  SENSUOUS  AND  SPIRITUAL  RELIGION 

IV.  PAGANISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY :  FIRST  CENTURY  A.  D.  . 
V.   PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIANITY :  FIRST  CENTURY  A.  D. 

VI.    ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  SCEPTICISM 
VII.   THE  EPICUREANS  AND  MODERN  LIFE 
VIII.    THE  STOICS  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT 

IX.    HUMANITY  AND  GOD  .  .  .  .  . 


"  One  adequate  support 

For  the  calamities  of  mortal  life 
Exists — one  only ;  an  assured  belief 
That  the  procession  of  our  fate,  howe'er 
Sad  or  disturbed,  is  ordered  by  a  Being 
Of  infinite  benevolence  and  power; 
Whose  everlasting  purposes  embrace 
All  accidents,  converting  them  to  good." 

— Wordsworth  {The  Excursion). 

"  "Ei  jlOL  ^VVSLTj  (pepOVTL 

Moipa  rap  evaenTov  dyvduv  16}  ov 

"Ep-yuf  re  Trdrrwi^,  (Lv  vojuoi  npoKEivrat 

'TipiTrodeg,  ovpav'iav 

Al  aldepa  reicvudevTEg,  uv  "OlviinoQ 

Uarf/p  juSvog,  ov6e  viv 

Qvard  (pvoLQ  dvipov 

"'EriKTEv.  ovSe  fiT/7T0Te  lada  KaTaKoijudari 
Meyag  kv  rovToig  Qebg,  ovSej  yr^pdaKec." 

—Sophocles  {CEdip.  Tyrann.,  v.  863-871). 

"Unsere  Welt  wird  noch  so  fein  werden,  dass  es  ebenso  lacherlich 
sein  wird,  einen  Gott  zu  glauben,  als  heut  zu  Tage  Gespenster." — 
LiCHTENBERG  [apud  Tholuck,  Die  Glauhvourdigkeit  der  Evangelischen 
Geschichte,  S.  24,  25). 

"  There  is  a  superstition  approaching  to  weakness  or  worse  in  be- 
ing over-afraid  of  superstition," — Palgrave  {Hist,  of  Normandy 
and  England,  i.  137). 


"Opinionum  enim  commenta  delet  dies:  Naturae  judicia  confir- 
mat." — Cicero  {De  Natura  Deorum,  ii.  2,  5). 


INTRODUCTION. 


This  course  of  Sermons  was  delivered  with  a  view  of 
assisting,  if  possible,  minds  perplexed  by  prevalent 
modes  of  agnostic  tliouglit.  In  every  congregation  of 
educated  people  there  are  some  who  have  by  no  means 
thrown  off  their  reverence  for  religion,  but  who  are 
harassed  by  the  schism  between  their  intellectual 
attitude  and  their  devotional  feelings.  In  the  church 
in  which  I  have  ministered  for  many  years,  I  was  well 
aware  that  there  were  hearers  of  this  kind,  and  these 
sermons  were  an  attempt  to  help  them  in  their 
difficulties. 

On  mentioning  to  my  dear  friend  and  vicar,  the 
Picv.  T.  J.  Eowsell,  my  purpose  of  trying  to  deal  with 
this  state  of  mind,  he  not  only  expressed  approval,  but 
gave  me  his  w^arm  sympathy,  and  his  presence  at  the 
delivery  of  the  Sermons.  I  felt  myself  that,  in  a 
church  in  which  two  earnest  pastoral  discourses  were 
preached  every  Sunday,  it  was  permissible  to  employ 
the  third  (afternoon)  service,  at  least  occasionally,  in 
speaking  upon  subjects  somewhat  remote  from  ordinary 


2 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


congregational  needs,  yet  possibly  helpful  to  special 
types  of  mind. 

The  work  is  now  published  in  compliance  with  a 
wish  expressed  by  many  hearers,  and;  in  particular,  at 
the  request  of  my  vicar,  and  of  the  Eev.  Canon  Farrar, 
who,  with  much  kindness,  has  written,  from  his  own 
point  of  view,  a  preface  to  the  series. 

In  submitting  these  Discourses  to  the  public,  I  must 
request  the  reader  to  bear  in  mind  the  special  aim 
with  which  they  were  composed  and  preached.  This 
was  to  suggest  that  the  attitude  of  what  is  called 
Nescience  towards  spiritual  religion  can  only  justify 
itself  by  dropping  out  of  sight  a  large  class  of  facts 
exhibited  in  the  development  of  our  race,  or  by  refusing 
to  these  facts  what  appears  to  me  the  only  adequate 
interpretation.  A  striking  chapter  in  this  history  is 
the  contact  of  Hellenism  and  Christianity  in  the  first 
and  second  centuries  of  our  era.  Greek  speculation  in 
its  ethical  aspects  and  Hebrew  religiousness  are  both 
phenomena  of  a  kind  which  cannot  be  dismissed  as 
wholly  illusory,  as  having  no  ground  in  ultimate 
reality,  and  no  meaning  beyond  themselves.  I  wished 
to  suggest  to  hearers  to  whom,  often  in  their  own 
despite,  religion  in  this  world  appears  a  mere  dream, 
evolved  under  purely  human  conditions  by  the  mis- 
reading of  the  phenomena  of  nature,  that  such  an 
interpretation  is  too  narrow  for  the  facts  and  too  little 


INTRODUCTION. 


3 


in  harmony  with  the  deepest  roots  of  our  own  being 
to  hold  its  ground.  I  tried  to  show  that  the  Socratic 
and  Platonic/  as  well  as  the  Hebrew  and  Christian 
faith  requires  another  and  a  higher  view  of  the  world 
and  of  man,  and  that  the  idea  of  a  living  God  would 
be  found  to  harmonise,  when  allowance  is  made  for  the 
necessary  limits  of  our  faculties,  with  the  teaching  of 
experience,  if  experience  be  understood  to  include 
spiritual  experience.  I  hoped  that  minds  far  from 
insensible  to  the  force  of  religious  sentiment  might 
perceive  that  it  was  no  way  irrational  to  believe  in  a 
transcendental  object  of  that  sentiment — in  an  ador- 
able Being  whom  it  was  neither  superstition  nor 
fanaticism  to  endeavour  to  make  consciously,  as  He  is 
really,  the  indwelling  presence  of  our  souls  and  of  our 
lives.  In  a  word,  the  fundamental  idea  of  the  Sermons 
is,  that  the  very  existence  of  the  spiritual  faculty  in 
man,  so  persistent  and  so  vigorous,  is  ground  of  faith 
in  a  supersensuous  reality  corresponding  to  this  faculty 
and  creating  it.    As  we — 

"  Hear  the  mighty  stream  of  tendency 

Uttering,  for  elevation  of  our  thought, 
A  clear  sonorous  voice,"  ^ 


1  It  is  instructive  to  observe  that  Socrates  and  Plato  are  objects  of  the  in- 
tense dislike  of  some  modern  schools  of  thought.  See  Draper,  "  History  of 
Intellectual  Development  in  Europe,"  vol.  i.  c.  v.,  and  Robert  Lewin,  M.D., 
"  Life  and  Mind,"  pp.  5,  6,  note. 

2  This  famous  phrase,  "stream  of  tendency,"  is  that  of  Wordsworth  (Ex- 
cursion, Book  ix.). 


4 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS'. 


we  find  the  witness  for  God  and  the  justification  of 
worship. 

The  nine  Sermons  in  this  volume  are  accordingly 
variations  on  this  theme.  I  set  out  with  endeavouring 
to  show  that  there  is  no  rational  ground  for  placing 
the  intellectual  and  aesthetic  side  of  our  beins;  in 
antagonism  with  the  religious  side  of  it,  and  that 
religion,  essentially  spiritual  in  its  character,  though  it 
clothes  itself  in  form,  is  the  soul  and  principle  of  all 
forms.  The  power  of  a  spiritual  faith  in  history  to 
triumph  over  unbelief  and  superstition  is  illustrated 
by  the  contrast  between  Gentile  rituals  and  Christian 
worship.  The  preparation  for  Christianity  in  the 
Eoman  Empire  through  philosophy  become  devout, 
exhibits  in  two  distinct  and  independent  manifestations 
the  spiritual  forces  which  sway  the  souls  of  men. 
The  sixth  discourse  is  an  attempt  to  vindicate  both  the 
rights  of  inquiry  and  the  rights  of  faith — in  technical 
terms,  the  rights  of  the  subject  and  the  rights  of  the 
object;  the  seventh,  to  bring  out  the  disastrous 
influence  of  the  too  self-regarding  scheme  of  life  which 
excludes  all  relation  to  the  Infinite.  The  sermon  on  the 
Stoics  and  Modern  Thought  dwells  upon  the  persist- 
ence of  religious  sentiments  and  religious  ideas  under 
unfavourable  conditions,  and  on  the  testimony  thus 
afi'orded  to  the  reality  from  which  they  spring.  I 
have,  finally,  summed  up  the  case  as  presented  in  the 


INTRODUCTION. 


5 


previous  discourses,  and  indicated  some  aspects  of 
Christianity  which  confirm  our  faith  in  a  living  Lord  of 
all,  and  help  us  to  live  as  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible. 

The  form  of  the  sermon  must,  of  course,  render 
this  line  of  thouglit  unsystematic,  and  has  compelled 
me  to  give  a  sketch,  not  a  full  exposition.  But,  per- 
suaded as  I  am  that  we  reach  spiritual  verities  not 
through  intellect  only,  but  through  conscience  and 
affection,  I  shall  be  satisfied  if  I  shall  have  induced 
any  hearer,  or  if  I  can  induce  any  reader,  to  seek  the 
highest  philosophy  of  life  in  the  region  of  religious 
trusts,  and,  without  abnegating  reason,  to  rest  in  the 
Lord,  and  wait  patiently  for  Him." 

In  fact,  the  attempt  to  exclude  from  the  sphere 
both  of  thought  and  conduct  all  regard  to  the  Infinite, 
which,  whether  we  will  or  not,  overshadows  and 
colours  our  lives,  can  end  only  in  failure.  Monistic 
schemes  of  philosophy  are  no  doubt  wrecked  against 
the  dualities  of  human   existence.-^    God  and  man, 


1  "  II  est  impossible,  avec  un  peu  d'attention,  de  ne  pas  etre  frapp6  d'uu 
ph6nom^;ne  que  presentent  uniformement  la  science,  la  vie  humaine,  et  la 
societe.  Chacune  de  leurs  parties,  chacune  de  leurs  manifestations  met  en 
saillie  deux  principes  opposes  et  rivaux,  egalement  vrais  Tun  et  Fautie, 
egalement  imperieax,  destines,  ce  semble,  a  se  limiter,  a  se  modifier  mutu- 
ellement,  a  produire,  par  leur  combinaison,  l'6tat  regulier,  la  verite  des 
choses,  mais  ne  parvenant  jamais  a  I'aceomodement  desire,  et  perpetuant 
dans  les  differentes  spli^res  que  nous  avons  indiquees  ees  dualites  incura- 
bles et  desesperantes  qui  finissent  par  nous  sembler  les  conditions  fatales 
de  la  pens6e  et  de  I'existence  hiimaincs."— Vinet,  "  Essais  de  Philosophic 
Morale,"  Introduction,  p.  ii. 


6 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


Divine  destination  and  human  freedom,  reign  of  law 
and  providence,  eternal  order  and  prayer,  perfect  good- 
ness and  possibility  of  sin,  unchanging  purpose  and 
forgiveness,  cannot  be  grasped  under  one  complete  and 
consistent  conception.  We  can  conceive  the  Infinite 
in  relation  only  to  our  finite  consciousness.  We  can 
indeed  make  the  Infinite  a  subject  of  thought,  but  we 
can  only  represent  it  to  our  minds  under  some  image 
that  is  drawn  from  oar  finite  experience.  Thus,  while 
in  the  realm  of  speculation  it  is  permissible,  and  indeed 
inevitable,  that  we  recognise  the  existence  of  unity 
as  a  unity  which  transcends  all  finite  modes  of  think- 
ing,^ the  moral  and  practical  danger  of  monistic  thought 
is  the  hazard  of  letting  go  our  foothold  on  this  earth 
in  futile  attempts  to  scale  heaven.  We  may  lose  sight 
of  the  sacredness  of  duty,  of  the  imperative  claims  of 
conscience,  of  the  need  of  worshipping  the  Father  of 
spirits,  while  striving  vainly  to  grasp  a  conception  of 
the  Infinite  Power  for  wliich  we  refuse  to  allow  our 
sensible  and  spiritual  experience  to  furnish  any  illus- 
trative symbol.  Conscious  of  the  inadequacy  and  of 
the  purely  relative  truth  of  all  symbols,  we  may  lose 
ourselves  in  empty  space,  and  forget  that  the  symbol, 
inadequate  as  it  is,  is  truth,  which  is  not  the  less  real 
because  it  is  relative  to  ourselves. 


1  8ee  the  Sermon  on  the  Stoics  and  Modern  Thought,  p.  128. 


INTRODUCTION. 


7 


This  is  not,  however,  the  clanger  to  which  the  minds 
of  Englishmen  are  most  exposed.  The  danger  lies  for 
us  in  the  other  direction — that  of  pronouncing  the 
Infinite  a  mere  chimera,  because  it  necessarily  tran- 
scends intelligence,  and  is  not  fully  presentable  to 
imagination,  and  so  of  resolutely  shutting  it  out  from 
all  influence  upon  thought  and  life.  The  Positive 
philosophy,  though  originating  in  France,  has  a  natural 
affinity  for  ourselves.  The  policy  of  wholly  letting 
alone  subjects  which  lie  beyond  the  range  of  sensible 
observation  and  experiment  commends  itself  to  many 
of  us  as  the  height  of  practical  wisdom.  The  matter- 
of-fact  philosophy  of  Locke^  contains,  indeed,  the  germ 
of  the  system  of  Auguste  Comte,  and  good  upon  the 
whole  as  the  influence  of  Locke  on  English  thought 
has  been,  that  good  has  been  counterbalanced  by  some 
evil.  Certainly  we  shall  not  escape  mental  perplexity 
or  practical  difficulty  by  giving  the  lie  direct  to  the 
sense  of  the  Infinite  which  "  besets  us  behind  and 
before,  and  lays  its  hand  upon  us."  "Were  it  possible 
to  rid  ourselves  of  its  haunting  presence,  every  hue  of 
poetry,  every  hue  of  devotion,  all  that  sufi'uses  our 
being  with  ideal  beauty,  all  that  impels  it  to  noble 
ends,  would  be  washed  out  of  our  souls,  and  life  would 


1  See,  for  example,  Human  Understanding,  Book  IV.,  cc.  xviii.  and 
xix.,  on  "  Faith  and  Reason  "  and  "  Enthusiasm,"  where,  amidst  much 
good  sense,  he  wholly  misses  the  real  grounds  of  faith  and  of  certitude. 


8 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


speedily  become  in  theory  that  which^  as  it  is,  it  too 
easily  tends  to  become,  in  fact,  colourless  and  ignoble. 
So  far  as  our  relation  to  this  world  of  things  and 
persons  is  concerned,  we  have  to  order  our  lives  by 
what  we  know.  Yet  it  is  the  light  that  comes  from 
the  source  of  all  being  which  clothes  what  we  know 
with  its  investiture  of  spiritual  glory,  and  gives  it  its 
power  over  conduct.  Like  the  peasant-poet,  Clare, 
who  in  his  childhood  set  out  from  his  father's  cottage 
to  touch,  if  he  might,  the  point  where  earth  and  sky 
meet,  we  are  drawn  on  towards  far  horizons  ''clad  in 
colours  of  the  air/'  by  the  impulse  and  sentiment 
which  comes  from  the  Father  of  Lights. 

In  this  series  of  Sermons,  therefore,  I  have  kept  in 
view  these  two  blended  elements  of  our  being,  which 
we  may  imperfectly  designate  as  knowledge  and  faith. 
Christianity  is  the  recognition  of  both  these  elements. 
It  leads  us  upwards  from  experience  to  that  which 
transcends  experience.  In  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
for  example,  we  have  piinciples  of  conduct  which  are 
most  surely  verified  in  the  experience  of  all  who  have 
attempted  to  guide  their  lives  by  them.  Even  what 
may  be  called  the  negative  and  temporary  aspects  of 
Christ's  law  of  the  kingdom  will  only  disappear 
because  their  work  is  done,  while  the  positive  and 
permanent  spirit  which  that  law  breathes  will  suffuse 
the  world  which  it  has   regenerated  with  an  atmo- 


INTRODrCTION. 


9 


sphere  of  heaven.  The  realisation  of  the  law  of  love 
would  annihilate  the  precepts  by  which  that  realisation 
was  attained,  as  the  scafiblding  is  taken  down  when 
the  building  is  finished.  Yet  all  this  is  strictly  within 
the  limits  of  verifiable  experience.  It  is  not  the  less 
true  that  the  power  by  which  the  precepts  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  translate  themselves  into  fact 
comes  from  a  source  which  is  beyond  all  experience. 
This  law  of  love,  verifiable  in  experience,  rests  upon 
faith  in  an  Infinite  Father  and  in  the  life  of  the  world 
to  come.  Experience  verifies  the  rule;  the  hue  of 
thought  and  tone  of  feeling  w^hicli  make  the  rule 
efi'ective  are  derived  from  the  consciousness  which  has 
risen  to  communion  with  God. 

With  the  aim  which  I  have  thus  indicated,  I  am  com- 
pelled, of  course,  to  pass  by  many  veins  of  Christian 
thought  which  find  their  appropriate  place  in  sermons 
addressed  to  belief  rather  than  to  doubt.  The  rich 
mine  of  doctrine  and  ethics  contained  in  St.  Paul's 
Epistles  is,  so  far  as  this  series  of  discourses  is  con- 
cerned, almost  wholly  unworked.  Nor  have  I  thought 
it  needful  to  encumber  the  course  of  thought  with  ques- 
tions of  historical  criticism.  The  date  of  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles — the  design  and  purpose  with  which  it  was 
written — do  not  seriously  afi'ect  my  subject.  The  ideas 
contained  in  this  masterpiece  of  Christian  oratory  (of 
which,  however,  we  have  probably  only  a  sketch) — St. 


10 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


Paul's  speech  on  the  Areopagus — find  support  in  his 
letters.-^  Discussions,  therefore,  which  have  no  direct 
bearing  on  my  aim  in  this  series  I  studiously  avoid, 
whatever  value  they  may  have  in  their  own  place. 

As  I  have  wished  not  to  distract  the  reader's  atten- 
tion from  the  text  by  crowding  the  margin  with  foot- 
notes, although  I  have  not  been  able  to  exclude  them 
entirely,  it  is  all  the  more  incumbent  upon  me  to 
express  my  obligation  to  some  of  the  books  which  have 
been  most  helpful.  I  can  indeed  profess  only  a  limited 
acquaintance  with  the  rich  literature  of  the  subject, 
though  I  have  done  what  I  could  in  the  scanty  leisure 
left  from  the  exacting  toil  of  two  professions.  In  exe- 
gesis I  have  found  Meyer  and  De  Wette  invaluable. 
In  the  higher  criticism  I  owe  much  to  Baur,  "  Paul  us 
der  Apostel  Jesu  Christi,"  Mr.  Jowett's  Epistles  of  St. 
Paul,  Dr  Stanley  on  the  Corinthians,  and  Dr.  Light- 
foot  on  the  Galatians.  For  historical  illustration,  both 
of  thought  and  of  event,  I  am  greatly  indebted  to  Dr. 
Merivale's  "History  of  the  Eomans  under  the  Empire" 
and  his  Boyle  Lectures  for  1864,  "The  Conversion  of 
the  Eoman  Empire;"  to  Conybeare  and  Howson's 
'^Life  and  Letters  of  St.  Paul;"  to  Eenan,  ^'St.  Paul;" 
to  Ewald,  "  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israel,"  B.  vi.,  ''Ges- 
chichte  des  Apostolischen  Zeitalters;"  to  Grote's  ''Pla- 


1  See  Renan,  •'  Saint  Paul,"  pp.  194, 195,  note.  On  the  other  hand,  Pfleide- 
rer,  "  Paulinism,"  ii.  248,  249  (Eng.  tr.). 


INTRODUCTION. 


11 


to,"  and  his  "  History  of  Greece,"  as  well  as  to  Jowett's 
Dialogues  of  Plato;  "  to  Havet,  ^'Le  Christianisme 
et  ses  Origines;"  Aiibertin,  "Sen^que;  "  Boissier,  *'  Le 
Christianisme  de  Sen^que"  in  the  ''Eevne  des  Deux 
Mondes,"  prem.  livr.  March  1871 ;  Denis,  "  Histoire 
des  Theories  et  des  Idees  morales  dans  I'Antiquite." 
In  the  sixth  sermon  I  am  under  special  obligations  to 
Mr.  Levin's  small  but  masterly  book  on  the  Philo- 
sophical Writings  of  Cicero."  I  am  also  indebted  to 
Mr.  LI.  Davies'  article  on  St.  Paul  "  in  Smith's  Dic- 
tionary of  the  Bible,"  and  to  various  articles  in  Herzog's 
"  Real  Encyklopadie  fur  Protestantische  Theologie  und 
Kirche,"  and  in  Schenkel's  ^' Bibel-Lexicon."  Among 
books  which  I  have  read  since  composing  the  Sermons, 
but  which  came  in  my  way  too  late  to  be  of  essential 
service,  I  may  mention  Dr.  Lightfoot's  Commentary 
on  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians ; "  Dr.  Farrar's 
"  Witness  of  History  to  Christ,"  Hulsean  Lectures  for 
1870;  Mr.  Capes' University  Life  of  Ancient  Athens; " 
Baur's  ''Sokrates  und  Christus,"  and  "Seneca  und 
Paulus,"  which,  buried  in  the  "  Tiibinger  Zeitschrift " 
and  Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift."  were  beyond  my  reach 
until  Zeller  edited  in  a  separate  form  Drei  Abhand- 
lungen  zur  Geschichte  der  alten  Philosophic  und  Ihres 
Yerhaltnisses  zum  Christenthum."  This  book  of  Baur's, 
and  the  excellent  work  of  Constant  Martha,  "  Les 
Moralistes  sous  I'Empire  Romain,"  v/ould  have  been  of 


12 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


the  greatest  assistance  to  me  had  I  met  with  them 
earher.  I  ought  to  mention  that  I  had  read  Dr.  Stan- 
ley's article  on  Socrates  in  the  "  Quarterly  Eeview  " 
before  its  re-publication  in  the  third  series  of  "  Lectures 
on  the  Jewish  Church,"  as  well  as  some  extracts  from 
his  contributions  to  the  "  Classical  Museum/^  in  Dr. 
William  Smith's  article  Athense,"  in  the  Dictionary 
of  Classical  Geography."  I  notice  this  because  I  find 
that  some  passages  in  my  first  sermon  were  coloured, 
even  in  their  language,  by  unconscious  reminiscence. 
But  obligations  of  this  kind  I  am  unable  to  acknow- 
ledge in  every  case,  as  I  cannot  always  recall  the 
sources. 

I  may  add,  that  I  have  written  this  introduction 
before  seeing  Dr.  Farrar's  preface.  It  is  not,  perhaps, 
necessary  for  me  to  say  that  his  general  sympathy 
with  my  aim  by  no  means  implies  entire  approval 
on  his  part  either  of  my  method  of  treatment  or  of 
particular  sentiments,  for  which  I  am  myself  exclu- 
sively responsible. 

4  St.  Stephen's  Road, 
VVe.stboukxe  Park. 


L 

THE  CITY  AND  THE  APOSTLE. 


"Divine  and  human  influences  are  so  twisted  and  knit  together 
that  it  is  hard  to  sever  them." — Barrow  ( Works,  i.  102). 

"  'Ev  ToiCLV  tooTe^dvoig  oIkeI  rair  apxaiciiOLV 
'Adr/vaig.'' 

— Aristophanes  {Equit.  v.  1323). 

"  'EpExdEtdat  TO  TralaLov  d?^(3ioiy 
Kai  6ec)V  TraldEg  /LLandpuv^  'updg 
Xupag  dnopOrjrov  r'  dKO(pEpl36^uEvot 
'K?i£ivoTdTav  aocp'iav,  AeI  did  "kafnTpordrov 
'Baivovreg  d(5pC)g  aWepog,  ivda  iroO'  dyvdg 
''Epvla  IliEpidag  Movaag  Tih/ovat 
Aavddv  'Apfioviav  (j)VT£V(jai.^^ 

—Euripides  {3fed.  v.  824-834). 

"Unde  humanitas,  doctrina,  religio,  fruges,  jura,  leges,  artes  in 
omnes  terras  distributse  putantur." — Cicero  (Orat.  pro  Flaceo, 
xxvi.  62). 

"  Ei  Tig  doKsi  d7Jiog  TreTvoidevai  ev  capKiy  kyi)  fj.d?J.ov'  JlEpiTOfi?/  oic- 
Ta^fiepng,  en  yevovg  'laparj\  (^vkrjg  BEviai^'iv,  'Ej3paiog  'E^paiuv,  kuto. 
vdfiov  ^apiaaiog,  kutq  ^rfkov  diuKov  TTjV  kKKATjo'iav,  Ka-d  diKaioc'vvTjv 
T^v  ev  v6ju(f)  yevoutvog  d/iE/xivTog.  'AA/l'  ciTiva  7]v  fioi  Kept^r],  Tavra 
7jy?}/iiai  did  tov  XpiGTov  l^Tj/ulav." — St.  Paul  {Ep.  ad  Philip.,  iii.  4-7). 


I. 


"  And  they  that  conducted  Paul  brought  him  unto  Athens." 
Acts  xvii.  15. 

The  resolution  of  St.  Paul  to  preach  the  Gospel  in  Eu- 
rope— one  of  those  sudden  inspirations  which  outstrip 
with  the  insight  of  intuition  the  slower  processes  of  the 
understanding — was  perhaps  the  boldest  and  the  most 
momentous  step  ever  taken  in  the  spiritual  history  of 
mankind.  It  was  a  step  from  which  an  enthusiasm  less 
ardent  and  a  purpose  less  steadfast  than  his  might  well 
have  shrunk,  for  it  was  nothing  less  than  the  attempt 
to  overthrow,  by  the  simple  power  of  an  appeal  to  the 
human  heart  and  conscience,  the  religions  of  the  civili- 
sations of  Greece  and  Eome — religions  rooted  in  the 
traditions  and  entwined  with  the  national  life  of  six 
centuries  of  actual  history,  and  beyond  that,  again, 
resting  on  the  background  of  an  immemorial  past.  It 
was  an  attempt  which  might  well  have  seemed  certain 
of  failure,  and  yet  it  was  a  success. 

It  was  St.  Paul's  second  missionary  tour,  in  the  year 

of  our  Lord  51.    From  Alexandria  Troas,  where  the 

15 


16 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


thoughts  which  possessed  him  had  shaped  themselves 
into  the  vision  of  a  man  of  the  West  stretching  forth 
''lame  hands  of  faith"  towards  the  East  for  spiritual 
succour,  every  stage  of  his  progress  towards  Athens 
and  Corinth  was  ''  haunted,  holy  ground,"  planted 
with  the  mightiest  memories  of  the  past.  Behind  him 
was  the  plain  of  the  Troad,  consecrated  by  ''  the  tale 
of  Troy  divine,"  bright  with  the  fame  of  Homer  and 
of  Alexander,  and  associated  with  the  legendary  origin 
of  Rome.  He  sailed  past  Samothrace,  the  holy  isle  of 
worships  and  mysteries  lost  in  hoar  antiquity.  Upon 
the  horizon  rose  Athos,  with  crowdins;  memories  of  the 
might  of  Persia  wrecked  against  the  heroic  resistance 
of  free  Hellas.  Landing  near  the  famous  battle- 
field of  Philippi,  where  the  deathblow  Was  given  to 
the  Eoman  Commonwealth — the  battlefield  which  the 
genius  of  the  greatest  of  English  poets  has  made  classic 
ground  to  Englishmen — he  passed  through  Amphi- 
polis,  once  the  brightest  jewel  in  the  crown  of  imperial 
Athens;  through  Thessalonica  and  Bersea,  monuments 
of  the  vanished  empire  of  Alexander;  then  onward  by 
sea  past  ''the  snowy  top  of  cold  Olympus,'^  home  of 
the  gods  of  Greece;  past  the  peak  of  Ossa  and  the 
swelling  ridge  of  Pel  ion,  until,  leaving  in  the  distance 
on  his  right  hand  Thermopylae  and  Marathon,  he 
reached  Athens,  came  through  dismantled  Piraeus,  by 
the  ruins  of  the  long  walls,  to  the  noblest  city  of  the 


THE  CITY  AND  THE  APOSTLE. 


17 


ancient  world,  tlie  centre  of  Hellenic  culture,  the  uni- 
versity of  the  West. 

It  was  a  strange  meeting  this — the  meeting  of  such 
a  city  and  of  such  a  man,  both  so  great  in  their  own 
order,  and  yet  that  order  so  diverse  and  so  apparently 
antagonistic.  Athens  was  not  then,  at  the  time  of  St. 
Paul's  visit,  what  she  had  been  in  the  past,  and  yet 
the  life  of  the  past  quickened  her,  the  beauty  of  the 
past  clothed  her  still.  The  words  with  which  the 
Apostle  began  his  discourse  on  the  Areopagus,  Ye 
men  of  Athens,"  fall  upon  our  ears  with  a  strangely 
familiar  sound.  They  awaken  the  memories  of  her 
bygone  days — of  "  the  high  actions  and  of  the  high 
passions"  of  which  she  was  the  scene.  They  take  us 
back  in  thought  to  those  ^'famous  orators"  in  the 
period  of  her  freedom  and  of  her  greatness — 

"  Whose  resistless  eloquence 

Wielded  at  will  that  fierce  democracy, 
Shook  the  arsenal,  and  fulmined  over  Greece 
To  Macedon  and  Artaxerxes'  throne." 

We  see  the  city  of  the  vanished  ages  pass  as  in  a 
bright  panorama  before  us.  We  see  rising  out  of  the 
abyss — 

"  Her  men  of  might,  her  grand  in  soul : 

Gone,  glimmering  through  the  dream  of  things  that  were, 
First  in  the  race  that  led  to  glory's  goal, 
They  won  and  passed  away." 


18 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


We  see  once  more  the  day  when  the  barbarian  ranks 
went  down  before  the  levelled  spears  of  the  soldiers  of 
Marathon,  or  the  day  when  off  her  shores  her  sons 
sank  the  Persian  armada  in  the  waters  of  Salamis. 
We  behold  rising  under  the  statesmanship  of  Pericles 
and  the  genius  of  Pheidias  the  temples  and  statues 
which  clothed  her  with  her  imperial  mantle :  we  watch 
her  festal  multitudes  thronging  to  her  theatre  to  listen 
to  strains  of  immortal  poetry,  or  the  angry  crowds, 
chafing  under  the  restraint  of  inaction,  gathering  in 
her  streets,  as  men  beheld  from  her  walls  their  villas 
and  homesteads  wrapped  in  flames  by  the  Peloponne- 
sian  invader.  There  rise  before  us  the  scenes  of  that 
terrible  plague  when  doorways  and  temple  steps  and 
fountains  were  choked  with  corpses  and  her  great 
statesman  broke  into  a  passion  of  tears  as  he  placed 
the  funeral  chaplet  on  the  dead  face  of  his  last  son. 
We  picture  to  ourselves  the  anguish  and  terror  which 
smote  every  bosom  when  the  tidings  came  that  her 
generals  and  armies  were  lost,  and  her  ships  sunk  in 
the  harbour  of  Syracuse  :  we  realise  the  silent  despair 
which  fell  like  death  upon  her  when  the  news  reached 
her  that  her  last  fleet  was  in  the  hands  of  Lysander, 
and  that  she  was  at  the  mercy  of  her  enemies :  or  we 
imagine  to  ourselves  that  other  day — precursor  of 
'Hhat  dishonest  victory "  which  laid  Hellas  prostrate 
at  the  feet  of  Macedon — the  day  when  Athens  heard 


THE  CITY  AND  THE  APOSTLE. 


19 


that  Philip  was  on  his  march  to  Attica;  and  we  see 
her  citizens  firing  the  booths  in  the  market-place  to 
make  speedy  room  for  almost  the  last  free  assembly 
that  ever  met  within  her  walls.  And  the  vision  of  all 
that  greatness  touches  us  with  a  sense  of  pain  as  we 
think  how  shortlived  it  was. 

For  all  was  now  gone  when  St.  Paul  stood  or  walked 
in  the  streets  where  Socrates  had  so  often  gathered 
around  him  the  tanners  and  smiths  and  drovers,  who 
laughed  at  his  homely  jests,  or  were  thrilled  by  the 
magic  of  his  matchless  speech.  All  that  glorious  past 
was  gone  —  fleets  and  armies,  imperial  supremacy, 
political  freedom  —  all  were  gone.  Her  long  walls 
were  sinking  slowly  into  ruins.  Piraeus  was  dismantled, 
and  St.  Paul  landed  where  only  a  few  mean  houses 
clustered  around  a  solitary  temple.  The  Athens  of 
the  past  was  no  more.  Overshadowing  alike  the 
Greek  and  the  Latin  world  was  the  imperial  despotism 
of  Rome. 

Well,  all  this  was  gone — but  national  life  dies  hard, 
and  something  was  left  still.    Still — 

"  On  the  ^gean  shore  a  city  stands — 

Built  nobly,  pure  the  air,  and  light  the  soil — 

Athens,  the  eye  of  Greece,  mother  of  arts 

And  eloquence,  native  to  famous  wits, 

Or  hospitable  in  her  sweet  recess, 

City  or  suburban,  studious  walks  and  shades." 

Still  was  she  in  the  days  of  St.  Paul,  as  in  those  of 


20 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


Aristophanes,  ''the  bright,  the  violet-crowned  city." 
Still,  as  in  the  days  of  Euripides,  her  citizens  ''were 
ever  delicately  marching  through  the  most  pellucid 
air."  Still  "were  her  skies  as  blue,  her  crags  as  wild." 
The  glory  of  her  sunsets  still  bathed  in  a  flood  of  fire, 
of  purple  and  of  gold,  her  marble  columns,  her  inves- 
titure of  mountains,  and  her  sea.  Still  was  the  too 
dazzling  whiteness  of  her  limestone  rocks  shaded  by 
her  wide-spreading  plane-trees.  Her  temples  were  yet, 
for  the  most  part,  untouched  by  the  hand  of  the 
spoiler  or  by  the  efi'acing  finger  of  Time.  Nero  had 
not  yet  robbed  Greece  of  its  masterpieces  of  art.  The 
Parthenon  still  stood  upon  the  Acropolis  without  rent 
or  stain,  and  the  Athena  of  Pheidias  still  glittered  in 
ivory  and  gold,^  as  the  tutelary  goddess  who  watched 
over  the  city.  Here  the  schools  of  philosophy  had 
their  seat — 

"  The  olive  grove  of  Academe, 

Plato's  retirement,  where  the  Attic  bird 

Trilled  her  thick-warbled  notes  the  summer  long," — 

Lyceum,  and  *'the  painted  Stoa,"  and  the  garden  of 
Epicurus;  and  all  "the  eloquent  air  burned  and 
breathed "  with  the  accents  of  wisdom.  A  fallen  city 
she  was,  but  a  city  glorious  in  her  fall — a  museum,  a 
sanctuary,  a  university — redeemed  by  her  intellectual 


1  Gilding,  however,  had  replaced  the  inlaid  gold. — "  Diet,  of  Class.  Biog.," 
s.  V.  "  Pheidias,"  iii.  2rjl. 


THE  CITY  AND  THE  APOSTLE.  21 


force  from  her  political  nullity — looked  up  to  with 
reverence  by  her  former  rivals,  Sparta  and  Thebes, 
involved  with  her  in  the  common  doom  of  foreign 
conquest.  Here  Cicero  had  studied  and  Atticus  lived. 
Hither  came  the  young  Eoman  nobility  in  search  of 
culture  or  of  pleasure.  Strangers,  drawn  by  'Hhe 
remnants  of  her  splendour  past/^  as  well  as  by  her 
present  influence,  thronged  her  streets,  ^^and  spent 
their  time  in  nothing  else,  but  either  to  tell  or  to  hear 
some  new  thing," — "the  true  character,"  as  Hobbes 
drily  remarks,  ''of  politicians  without  employment." 
The  last  scandalous  story  from  Eome,  or  the  latest 
phase  of  philosophy,  nothing  came  amiss.  A  bright, 
pleasant,  garrulous  city  was  Athens  in  these  days  of 
St.  Paul,  where  seekers  for  truth  and  lovers  of  wisdom 
jostled  men  of  wit  and  fashion — where  the  sceptic  and 
the  devotee,  the  frivolous  and  the  earnest,  gazed  on  the 
same  bright  spectacle  of  festive  rites  and  gay  proces- 
sions— where  keen  intellects  were  asking  what  is  truth, 
and  aching  hearts  were  yearning  for  an  unknown  God. 

To  such  a  city  came  St.  Paul.  He,  too,  has  a  his- 
tory, and  stands  there,  in  the  market-place  and  the 
Areopagus,  the  heir  of  past  ages,  gathering  up  in  his 
own  soul  the  spiritual  experiences  of  a  race  and  country 
which  were  separated  from  Athens  and  the  Athenian 
by  ''an  interval  which  no  geometry  can  express."  He 
is  the  inheritor  of  that  Hebrew  faith  in  the  One  Living 
3 


22 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


God,  the  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  which  had  grown 
up  and  become  firmly  rooted  in  Palestine,  only  after 
ages  of  conflict  with  sun-worships,  with  dark  idola- 
tries of  Molech,  and  Ashera,  and  Baal,  with  sensual 
orgies  and  sanguinary  devilries.  But  the  battle  of 
monotheism  in  Judaea  had  been  fought  and  won.  For 
the  possession  of  that  faith  in  the  One  God  St.  Paul 
has  needed  to  pass  through,  in  his  own  person,  no 
mental  conflict.  He  owed  it  to  the  men  who  had  gone 
before  him — to  prophets  who  had  witnessed  and  died 
for  it  when  Israel  inflamed  himself  under  every 
green  tree,  and  Judah  filled  the  land  with  pollution 
and  with  blood — to  priests  and  scribes  who  taught  it 
in  synagogue,  and  school,  and  book — to  the  Maccabees, 
who  rescued  the  nation  from  the  power  of  Greek 
idolatry.  Into  the  inheritance  of  the  spiritual  fruits 
of  {^11  these  past  labours  St.  Paul  entered;  and  just  as, 
in  the  Hellenic  world,  Socrates  prepared  the  way  for 
Christianity  by  the  stimulus  which  he  gave  to  the 
religious  and  ethical  self-consciousness,^  so  on  Hebrew 
soil  the  work  of  the  prophets  was  the  necessary  pre- 
paration for  St.  Paul. 

But  St.  Paul,  too,  had  his  own  personal  discipline 
— must  be  baptized  with  the  baptism  with  which  his 
Master  had  been  baptized  before  he  could  do  his 


1  See  Baur,  "  Sokrates  und  Christus,  Abhandlungen,"  s.  247,  et  seq. 


THE  CITY  AND  THE  APOSTLE.  23 


Master's  work'  in  the  world.  Through  great  search- 
ings  of  heart"  must  he  pass  before  he  could  preach 
the  unity  of  God  in  that  Pagan  city.  Truly  has  it 
been  said  that  every  man  who  strives  to  learn  for 
himself  finds  that  his  hardest  task  lies,  not  in  what  he 
has  to  learn,  but  in  what  he  has  to  unlearn.  And  it 
was  so  with  St.  Paul.  According  to  the  straitest  sect 
of  his  religion,  he  had  lived  a  Pharisee.  His  mind — 
naturally  ardent,  enthusiastic,  impatient  of  trammels, 
on  which,  in  Tarsus,  some  chance  seeds  of  Greek  cul- 
ture had  fallen,  who  had  been  unconsciously  influenced, 
too,  by  the  more  mild  and  tolerant  principles  of  Ga- 
maliel, and  all  these  things  were  in  secret  preparing 
him  for  his  future  work — had  yet  been  swathed  in  the 
bands  of  Eabbinical  formalism.  He  seemed  to  have 
to  unlearn  all  that  he  had  held  as  most  indubitable 
and  most  sacred  when  he  gave  up  Gamaliel  for  JeBiis 
and  began  to  preach  the  faith  which  he  had  striven 
to  destroy.  Yet  this  was  but  a  single  step  in  his 
fresh  spiritual  career.  It  was  not  long  before  he 
saw  with  clearer  insight  than  the  Church  of  Jeru- 
salem, or  than  even  the  twelve  saw,  the  true  spirit  and 
genius,  the  real  tendencies  of  the  new  faith.  As  the 
vision  of  the  Man  of  Nazareth,  crowned  with  thorns 
and  pierced  by  the  nails  of  the  cross,  entered  into 
his  soul,  the  scales  fell  from  his  eyes,  and  he  felt 
rather  than  reasoned  that  this   trust  and  love  to- 


24 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


wards  the  Invisible  Father  of  all,  which  the  Christ 
had  taught  him,  in  truth  swept  aside  all  Hebrew  na- 
tionality, all  sacredness  of  outward  rites.  And  at  this 
period,  when  he  was  preaching  Christ  in  Philippi,  in 
Thessalonica,  in  Bersea,  and  in  Athens,  Christianity 
had  already  entered  on  its  second  phase,  was  passing 
from  the  condition  of  a  Jewish  sect  into  a  Church, 
catholic  in  the  best  sense  of  the  term, — into  a  world- 
wide religion.  Much  had  the  Apostle  yet  to  learn, 
much  yet  to  unlearn ;  but  one  thing  he  had  grasped, 
the  very  life  and  centre  of  all  his  teaching — the  uni- 
versality of  the  faith  of  Christ,  recognising  no  distinc- 
tion between  Jew  or  Gentile,  Greek  or  barbarian,  bond 
or  free,  male  or  female,  and  breaking  down  the  middle 
wall  of  partition  between  the  different  sections  of 
mankind  by  the  rushing  tide  of  an  all-comprehending 
creed  of  heart  and  conscience,  of  trust  and  love.  This 
creed  Paul  preached  in  Athens — a  creed  broader  than 
Hebrew  faiths  or  than  Greek  philosophies — a  universal 
Father,  a  Divine  life  of  filial  offering  and  brotherly 
love,  such  as  the  world  had  never  seen  or  Jew  or 
Greek  known. 

And  thus  the  city  and  the  Apostle  met — the  glory 
of  human  culture,  and  the  enthusiasm  of  Divine  faith. 
Many  lessons  touching  the  thought  and  life  of  our  own 
day,  suggested  by  this  singular  contrast,  I  propose  to 
draw  out,  to  the  best  of  my  power,  in  succeeding 
sermons. 


THE  CITY  AND  THE  APOSTLE. 


25 


One  only,  in  conclusion,  will  I  now  note.  It  is 
this :  God  has  a  place  and  w^ork  in  the  world  for 
Athens  as  well  as  for  St.  Paul,  for  St.  Paul  as 
well  as  for  Athens.  It  did  not  seem  so  then ;  there 
are  some,  on  either  side,  who  do  not  believe  it  now  : 
it  is  true  notwithstanding.  Neither  the  Athenian 
philosopher  nor  the  Jewish  apostle  understood  it,  and 
yet  it  has  come  to  pass.  Alike  for  the  influence  of 
the  city  in  which  Pericles  ruled,  in  which  Socrates 
lived  and  died,  and  for  the  influence  of  the  preacher 
of  His  Christ  has  God  made  room  in  His  own  world. 
Very  strange  to  each  other  were  the  Athenian  and 
St.  Paul.  ''What  will  this  babbler  say?"— this  Jew 
with  his  foreign  garb,  with  his  quaint  language  and 
his  uncouth  accent,  retailing  to  us  scraps  of  knowledge 
picked  up  here  and  there,  which  he  evidently  does  not 
understand, — this  eager  disputant,  who  talks  in  the 
market-place  like  another  Socrates,  and,  like  Socrates, 

seemeth  to  be  a  setter  forth  of  strange  gods."  What 
does  it  all  mean?  The  apostle^  too,  could  even  he 
understand  Athens  ?  Marvelling  at  the  idolatry  around 
him,  he  saw,  in  the  tumult  of  his  spirit,  little  more 
than  the  idolatry.  What  Athenian  listening  in  that 
crowd  could  dream  that  the  day  would  come  when  the 
creed  preached  by  St.  Paul  would  dethrone  the  goddess 
of  the  Parthenon  and  the  lords  of  Olympus,  close  the 
schools  of  philosophy,  seat  itself  in  the  palace  of  the 


26 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


Caesars,  transmute  tlie  temple  of  the  virgin  goddess 
into  the  church  of  the  Virgin  Mother,  and  create  a 
new  civilisation  out  of  the  ruins  of  the  old?  But 
neither  did  St.  Paul  foresee,  when  he  looked  upon  the 
city  wholly  given  up  to  idolatry,  that  the  spirit  of 
Socrates,  of  Plato,  and  of  Aristotle, — names  of  which 
he  had  probably  just  heard  and  no  more, — would  here- 
after profoundly  penetrate  the  theology  of  the  Church, 
an4  mould  and  tincture  the  Christendom  of  the  future. 

Greece,"  it  has  been  said,  "  arose  from  the  dead  with 
the  New  Testament  in  her  hand,"  ^  and,  I  may  add, 
has  leavened  with  her  culture,  her  art,  her  subtle  in- 
tellectual force,  the  world  which  the  New  Testament 
has  created.  Ah,  yes !  God's  thoughts  are  not  our 
thoughts,  nor  our  ways  His.  Athens  and  St.  Paul 
alike  saw  but  a  little  way  into  the  future ;  both  being 
dead  yet  speak.  As  God  lifts  His  world  age  by  age 
to  higher  and  nobler  levels,  He  brings  from  the  east 
and  from  the  west,  from  the  north  and  from  the 
south,  men  who  sit  down  with  Abraham,  and  Isaac, 
and  Jacob,  in  His  kingdom,  and  who  are  helping  to 
make  one  bright  and  perfect  thing  out  of  the  sundered 
elements  of  human  life. 


iGoldwin  Smith. 


11. 

CULTURE  ^AND  FAITH. 


"'AdE?i(po'i,  fj.y  Tvatdia  ytveade  rai^  cppenlv  dA/ia  ttj  Kada  vjjtt takers ^ 
Taig  6e  (ppeci  Te?.Eioi  y'lveade." — St.  Paul  (1  Ep.  ad  Corinth,  xiv.  20). 

"There  have  been  attempts  in  all  ages  to  separate  Christianity 
from  Judaism  and  Hellenism ;  but  to  carry  out  such  an  attempt  is 
not  to  interpret  Christianity,  but  to  construct  a  new  religion.  Chris- 
tianity has  not  only  affinities  with  Judaism  and  Hellenism,  but  it 
includes  in  itself  all  the  permanent  truths  to  which  both  witness." — 
Westcott  {The  Gospel  of  the  Resurrection,  pp.  60,  61). 

"When  Providence  would  make  a  revelation,  He  does  not  begin 
anew,  but  uses  the  existing  system ;  He  does  not  visibly  send  an  an- 
gel, but  He  commissions  or  inspires  one  of  our  own  fellows.  When 
He  would  bless  us.  He  makes  a  man  His  priest.  When  He  would 
consecrate  or  quicken  us,  He  takes  the  elements  of  this  world  as  the 
means  of  real  but  unseen  spiritual  influences." — John  Henry 
Newman  {Essays,  Critical  and  Historical,  ii.  194). 

"T'tveade  ovv  <pp6vi/Lioc  at  b^etg,  kol  aKspaioi  cjg  ai  TrepiGrepai." — 
Words  of  the  Lord  {3Iatt.  x.  16). 

"He  that  useth  his  reason  doth  acknowledge  God." — Whichcote 
{Aphorisms). 


11. 


"  Now  while  Paul  waited  for  them  at  Athens,  his  spirit  was  stirred 
in  him  when  he  saw  the  city  wholly  given  to  idolatry." — 
Acts  xvii.  16. 

All  wlio   have  read  Edmund  Burke's  magnificent 

eulogy  of  John  Howard  will  remember  that  Howard 

could   find   himself  in   Eome  and   yet  never  visit 

the   Coliseum   or   the   galleries   of    art.     He  was 

so  absorbed  by  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity,  that 

the    one    purpose   of    his   life    left    neither  place 

nor  leisure  for   any  other.    A   similar  enthusiasm 

stirred  the  spirit  of  St.  Paul   when  he  "  thought 

it  good  to  be  left  at  Athens  alone."    If  we  read 

the  Epistles  to  the  Thessalonians — the  earliest  books 

of  the  New  Testament,  written  in  the  year  of  our 

Lord  52,  about  a  twelvemonth  after  the  Apostle's 

brief  sojourn  in  Athens — we  shall  find  not  a  single 

syllable  to  indicate  that  the  brilliant  spectacle  on 

which  he  had  gazed  had  moved  him  to  any  other 

feeling  than  pity  for  idolatry;  we  shall  find  not  a 

word  about  the  Parthenon — not  a  word  about  the 

Painted  Porch  or  the  schools  of.  philosophy.  What 

we  do  find  is  a  heart  glowing  with  devotion  to  the 

3* 


30 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


cause  to  which  he  had  consecrated  his  life,  and  yearning 
with  the  intensest  affection  and  sympathy  for  the  con- 
verts whom  he  had  made.  It  seems  as  though  there 
were  no  chord  in  his  nature  that  responded  with  any 
thrill  of  emotion  to  the  touch  of  Hellenic  culture.  His 
whole  soul  was  absorbed  by  a  passion  of  religious  faith. 

Now,  my  brethren,  there  is  much  here  that  requires 
careful  discrimination,  if  we  are  to  gather  any  real 
guidance  for  the  present  from  the  spiritual  lessons 
of  the  past.  The  advocates  of  a  religion  exclusively 
biblical  will  see  in  the  Apostle's  indifference  to 
Hellenic  culture,  another  ray  of  glory  in  his  crown  of 
righteousness.  The  advocates  of  a  purely  humanitarian 
development  will  scorn  the  man  who  could  look  upon 
the  Acropolis  unmoved  b}^  the  spirit  of  beauty  with 
which  its  very  atmosphere  was  filled.  Would  it  not, 
perhaps,  be  better,  before  we  either  praise  or  condemn 
St.  Paul,  to  try  to  understand  him?  What  John 
Foster  has  said  of  Howard  may  be  said  with  at  least 
equal  truth  of  St.  Paul — Mere  men  of  taste  ought  to 
be  silent  respecting  such  a  man  as  Howard;  he  is 
above  their  sphere  of  judgment."  But  neither  is  the 
religious  man  right  who  thinks  to  justify  his  scorn 
of  culture  by  the  example,  as  he  deems  it,  of  St.  Paul. 
We  must  look  at  this  matter  historically  if  we  wish  to 
understand  the  Apostle  and  his  relation  to  the  world 
of  Gentile  thought  and  life. 


CULTURE  AND  FAITH. 


31 


We  must  remember,  then,  that  St.  Paul  was  a  Jew. 
His  whole  life  recoiled  from  idolatry,  and  with  idol- 
atry every  graven  image,  every  sculptured  form  in 
Athens  was  indissolubly  entwined.  Nothing  in  his 
previous  mental  history  had  prepared  him  to  feel  as 
we  feel  in  the  presence  of  the  monuments  of  that 
marvellous  past;  everything,  on  the  contrary,  tended 
to  call  off  his  mind  from  the  beauty  around  him  to  fix 
it  on  the  sin.  He  would  have  been  false  to  his  holiest 
convictions,  untrue  to  his  own  innermost  nature,  if  this 
likening  of  the  Godhead  'Ho  gold  or  silver  or  stone, 
graven  by  art  and  man's  device,"  although  the  hand  of 
Pheidias  or  Praxiteles  had  graved  them,  had  not  fired 
his  soul  with  a  glow  of  indignation  which  counteracted 
the  spell  of  beauty.  Of  the  history  of  Athens  in  the 
days  of  her  glory  he  knew  but  little.  The  great  names 
of  the  Greek  and  Eoman  past,  of  the  warriors  and 
legislators,  of  the  poets  and  philosophers,  who  had 
built  up  that  splendid  civilisation,  were  to  him  but  as 
shadows.  His  chief  associations  with  Hellenic  history 
and  with  Hellenic  art  were  solely  connected  with  the 
heroic  resistance  of  his  own  countrymen  to  the  attempt 
of  Antiochus  Epiphanes  to  introduce  idolatry  into 
Judaea.  He  belonged  to  another  world,  Jewish  not 
Greek;  and  in  the  depth  and  intensity  of  the  moral 
earnestness  which  sent  him  forth  to  preach  Christ 
to  the  Gentiles,  he  could  see  but  obstacles  to  the 


32 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


Divine  kingdom  on  earth  in  the  fairest  creations  of 
genius. 

All  this  is  natural  and  intelligible.  This  man  was 
God's  instrument  for  a  special  work,  and  his  very 
defects  on  the  side  of  culture  were,  under  the  actual 
circumstances,  as  essential  for  the  fulfilment  of  that 
work  as  his  impassioned  faith  and  his  untiring  devo- 
tion. But  it  is  a  very  different  thing  when  the  point 
of  view  is  shifted  from  the  historical  estimate  of  the 
man  to  that  of  a  blind  slavery  to  the  letter,  which 
perverts  the  noble  life  and  character  of  the  Apostle 
to  justify  a  sweeping  condemnation  of  culture.  When 
it  is  said,  St.  Paul  cared  not  for  the  splendours  of  art 
or  for  the  wisdom  of  the  philosophers,  why  then  should 
we?  I  protest  against  the  idolatry  of  the  letter  and 
the  estimate  of  the  man.  No;  St.  Paul  was  not  in 
conscious  sympathy  with  classic  art  or  with  classic 
philosophy.  He  could  not  have  been  in  sympathy 
with  them  without  ceasing  to  be  St.  Paul.  The  home 
of  his  spirit  was  not  in  Athens  or  in  Eome. .  His 
citizenship  was  in  heaven,  from  whence  he  looked  for 
his  Saviour,  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

All  this  I  grant.  I  grant  that  the  spiritual  faiths 
which  had  struck  their  roots  so  deeply  in  his  soul 
partially  narrowed  the  range  of  his  intellect.  Not  the 
less  certain  is  it  that  there  were  elements  in  his  nature, 
and  that  there  are  indications  in  his  teaching,  which 


C  ULTURE  AND  FAITH. 


33 


put  to  shame  the  ignorance  or  the  fanaticism  which 
decries  culture.  Nowhere  shall  Ave  find  side  by  side 
with  such  depth  and  earnestness  of  religious  conviction 
a  more  tolerant  and  candid  spirit  than  is  displayed  in 
this  speech  on  the  Areopagus.  With  a  breadth  of 
view  very  remarkable  in  the  man  who  describes  him- 
self as  an  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews,  as  touching  the 
law  a  Pharisee/'  we  see  him  finding  under  the  forms 
of  Athenian  worship  a  hidden  faith  in  the  One  Lord 
of  heaven  and  earth,  recognising  the  unity  of  all  the 
families  of  mankind,  beholding  in  the  bUnd  gropings  of 
these  men  of  Athens  after  the  Invisible  and  the  Divine 
the  presence  and  inspiration  of  the  God  in  whom  we 
live  and  move  and  have  our  being.  The  man  who, 
amidst  all  the  unutterable  pollutions  of  Eoman  pagan- 
ism, could  look  below  the  surface  and  discern  there 
"  the  Gentiles,  who,  having  not  the  law,  do  by  nature  the 
things  contained  in  the  law,"  had  little  in  common  w^ith 
the  intolerance  of  the  zealot;  nor  was  that  man  an  enemy 
of  culture  who  wrote,  "Whatsoever  things  are  true, 
whatsoever  things  are  honest,  whatsoever  things  are  just, 
whatsoever  things  are  pure,  whatsoever  things  are  lovely, 
whatsoever  things  are  of  good  report :  if  there  be  any 
virtue,  and  if  there  be  an}^  praise,  think  on  these  things." 

We  do  not,  how^ever,  live  in  St.  Paul's  age,  but  in 
our  own,  and  the  reconciliation  between  culture  and 
faith  ought  not  to  be  impossible  after  eighteen  centuries 


34 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


of  Christianity.  It  is  sad  that  we  should  have  to  say 
so — but  the  truth  must  be  spoken;  culture  and  faith 
are  even  yet  not  fully  reconciled.  A  large — but  also 
I  think  a  lessening — portion  of  what  is  distinctively 
called  the  religious  world  looks  askance  at  culture — 
sees  evil  in  the  fearless  exercise  of  the  reason,  and  finds 
the  trail  of  the  serpent  in  the  sense  of  beauty.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  world  of  literature  and  the  world 
of  science  manifests — sometimes  by  its  silence,  some- 
times by  open  avowal — its  distrust,  even  its  dislike,  of 
what  is  comprehended  under  the  name  of  faith. 

It  is  scarcely  half  a  century  ago  that  a  Nonconformist, 
possessed  of  much  intellectual  force  and  insight,  wrote  an 
essay  "  On  the  Aversion  of  Men  of  Taste  to  Evangeli- 
cal Eeligion,"  and  in  our  day  the  distinguished  son  of 
a  distinguished  father  has  felt  it  his  duty  to  plead  the 
cause  of  culture,  in  other  words,  of  enlightenment,  of 
intelligence,  of  mental  breadth,  of  openness  to  all  im- 
pressions of  beauty,  and  to  all  fresh  aspects  of  truth, 
against  the  predominating  narrowness  of  much  that 
calls  itself — and  no  doubt  at  bottom  is — faith.  If  we 
read  current  literature,  if  we  take  up  ecclesiastical 
newspapers,  if  we  listen  to  the  conversation  of  different 
classes  of  society,  the  fact  strikes  us — strikes  me,  if  I 
may  speak  for  myself — most  painfully.  Culture  is 
pitted  against  faith,  and  faith  against  culture,  as  two 
irreconcilable  things ;  the  perfection  of  that  which  is 


CULTURE  AND  FAITH. 


35 


human  is  treated  as  having  nothing  to  do  with  the 
trust  in  that  which  is  Divine.  The  antithetical  phrases 
which  have  come  down  to  us  from  the  past,  or  which 
we  have  invented  for  ourselves,  are  suggestive  of  the 
same  opposition.  Nature  and  grace,  secular  and  spirit- 
ual, sacred  and  profane,  science  and  religion,  litera- 
ture and  dogma,  humanitarianism  and  supernaturalism 
— expressions  true  enough  as  denoting  different  sides 
of  the  same  thing — are  too  often  understood  to  mean 
two  things,  not  one  thing  under  different  aspects,  like 
the  shield  of  the  image  of  Victory  in  the  fable,  with  a 
side  that  is  silver  and  a  side  that  is  gold.  Religious 
men  stigmatise  intellectual  insight  as  rationalism  or  in- 
fidelity:  men  of  culture  return  the  compliment,  and  in- 
sinuate, if  they  do  not  say,  that  faith  is  sheer  illusion. 

And  thus  men  have  parted  the  things  which  God 
has  joined,  although  the  greatest  minds  have  ever  pro- 
tested against  the  divorce.  Socrates — and  in  this  no 
doubt  he  was  wrong,  and  built  his  ethical  theory  on 
too  narrow  a  basis — Socrates  identified  knowledge  and 
morality :  the  partisans  of  some  forms  of  belief  who  call 
themselves  Christians  have  all  but  wholly  sundered 
them.  Clement  of  Alexandria  held  philosophy  to  be 
the  ally  of  faith,  and  took  for  his  motto — Neither 
knowledge  without  faith,  nor  faith  without  know- 
ledge." ^    Has  the  Christian  Church  always  breathed 

1  "  Oure  i)  yvCi(Ti%  avtv  niareui^  ovd'  79  jrt'<7Tis  avev  yv(o(Te<ai  "    (Stromat.  v.  1).  It 


36 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


the  spirit  of  Clement?  Alas!  we  seem  to  see  realised 
in  modern  days  the  quaint  fancy  of  Plato,  tliat  the  soul 
of  the  human  being  was  originally  cut  into  two,  and 
that  each  half  soul  is  ever  seeking  its  other  half,  having 
no  rest  until  it  has  found  it.  So  culture  that  is  hu- 
man, and  faith  which  feels  after  and  finds  the  Divine, 
stand  apart,  each  incomplete  without  the  other,  each 
without  the  other  unresting  and  unsatisfied.  We  can 
but  sorrowfully  protest  against  this  schism  of  our 
nature;  we  can  but  declare  that  though  these  things 
are  so,  they  ought  not  to  be  so,  and  that  these  severed' 
elements  of  our  being  are  meant  to  coalesce,  like  two 
dewdrops  when  they  touch  each  other,  into  one  bright 
and  perfect  whole. 

It  is  true,  culture  is  incomplete  without  faith,  and 
faith  is  incomplete  without  culture.  Without  the  faith 
which  lifts  the  soul  upward  to  an  invisible  Lord  of  the 
conscience,  which  makes  duty  the  paramount  sovereign 
of  the  life,  which  chastens  and  subdues  the  inner 
region  of  thought  and  emotion  with  an  all-controlling 
ideal  of  perfect  righteousness — intellect  is  but  too 
apt  to  become  its  own  end,  and  imaginative  feeling  to 
degenerate  into  a  personal  luxury,  disregarding  the 

is  true  that  Clement  is  here  speaking  of  what  we  should  call  theological 
knowledge ;  but  the  words  aptly  gather  up  the  tone  and  spirit  of  the  great 
Alexandrian  teachers  of  the  third  century  a.d.,  Pantsenus,  Origen,  and  Cle- 
ment, which  Dr.  John  Henry  Newman  describes  as  coming  like  music  to  his 
inward  ear  (Apologia,  p.  89). 


CULTURE  AND  FAITH. 


37 


wail  of  the  world's  sorrow  and  hiding  out  of  sight  the 
running  sore  of  its  moral  evil.  True  as  it  is  that 
religion  has  ever  been  found  ready  to  unite  itself  with 
intolerance  and  with  ignorance,  it  is  equally  true  that 
culture  has  been  found  quite  as  capable  of  allying 
itself,  not  merely  with  frivolity,  not  merely  with  a 
lack  of  all  depth  of  feeling,  of  all  earnestness  of  moral 
purpose,  but  even,  in  certain  times  and  places,  with  the 
foulest  corruption. 

It  is  but  too  certain  that  there  have  been  periods  of 
history  when  intellectual  vigour,  sense  of  beauty,  refine- 
ment of  taste,  even  much  superficial  susceptibility  to 
emotion,  have  been  associated  with  more  or  less  of 
evil.  All  these  have  been  powerless  to  keep  under 
the  brute  nature  which  has  risen  up  in  assertion  of  its 
sensual  or  cruel  impulses  in  the  very  teeth  of  the 
culture  w^hich  has  lacked  either  the  will  or  the  force 
to  subdue  them.  To  have  learned  to  give  poison 
secretly  and  efi"ectually,  to  have  raised  a  corrupt 
literature  to  pestilent  perfection,  to  have  organised  a 
successful  scheme  to  arrest  free  inquiry,  and  to  pro- 
scribe free  expression,  are  works  of  knowledge  and 
skill  whose  progress  towards  their  goal  has  hardly 
conduced  to  the  general  good."  ^  It  must  be  acknow- 
ledged, with  whatever  reluctance,  by  all  who  will  not 


1  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  p.  24,  25. 


38 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


play  fast  and  loose  with  facts,  that  "  a  baser  side  of 
literature  and  of  life  "  has  often  been  turned  towards 
us  in  the  very  centres  of  ancient  and  modern  civilisa- 
tion. In  the  most  brilHant  period  of  Athenian  great- 
nesS;  when  art  had  reached  its  acme  of  noble  simplicity, 
when  poetry  and  oratory  shed  over  the  public  life  a 
glowing  atmosphere  of  grace  and  beauty,  when  intel- 
lects unrivalled  in  force  and  subtlety  discussed  ques- 
tions which  men  are  debating  still — evils  which  are 
not  so  much  as  named  among  ourselves  were  sapping 
the  very  foundations  of  moral  order,  and  were  made 
by  men  whose  own  personal  purity  is  above  suspicion 
the  subject  of  jest  and  witticism.  And  other  ages, 
splendid  in  art,  bright  with  intellectual  achievement — 
in  Kome,  the  age  of  Augustus — in  Italy,  the  age  of  the 
Medici  and  of  Leo  the  Tenth — in  France,  the  age  of 
Louis  the  Fourteenth — these,  too,  have  been  ages  of 
a  culture  which  was  quite  compatible  with  heartless 
frivolity  and  with    rank  corruption,  mining  all  within." 

Or,  to  come  a  little  nearer  home :  Are  we  quite  sure 
that  in  our  own  country  and  in  our  own  day  the 
cultivation  of  the  understanding,  combined  though  it 
be  with  the  cultivation  of  taste,  may  safely  supersede 
the  faith  of  the  heart  ?  Perhaps  I  cannot  do  better 
than  cite  on  this  point  some  words  of  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer. 

The  "  belief  in  the  moralising  effects  of  intellectual 


CULTURE  AND  FATTH. 


39 


culture/'  he  says,  ''is  flatly  contradicted  by  facts." 
"Are  not  fraudulent  bankrupts  educated  people,  and 
getters-up  of  bubble  companies;  and  makers  of  adulte- 
rated goods,  and  users  of  false  trade-marks,  and  retailers 
wbo  have  light  weights,  and  owners  of  unseaworthy 
ships,  and  those  who  cheat  insurance  companies,  and 
those  who  carry  on  turf  chicaneries,  and  the  great 
majority  of  gamblers?  Or,  to  take  a  more  extreme 
form  of  turpitude,  is  there  not  among  those  who  have 
committed  murder  by  poison  within  our  memories  a 
considerable  number  of  the  educated — a  number  bear- 
ing as  large  a  ratio  to  the  educated  classes  as  does  the 
total  number  of  murderers  to  the  total  population?"^ 

Well,  but  it  may  be  said,  this  is  not  culture.  The 
modern  apostle  of  culture  would  not  for  a  single  in- 
stant admit  that  mere  intellectual  acuteness  varnished 
over  with  a  superficial  refinement  is  what  he  under- 
stands by  culture.  He  pleads  for  "sweetness"  as  well 
as  for  "light," — for  a  depth  and  warmth  of  pure 
emotion  as  well  as  for  the  mental  vision  which  strives 
to  see  things  as  they  are.  Does  he  not  expressly 
declare  that  the  aim  of  culture  is  to  make  reason  and 
the  will  of  God  prevail? 

My  brethren,  this  is  just  what  I  am  saying.  I  am 
protesting  against  this  unhappy  divorce  between  mind 


1  "  The  study  of  Sociology,"  p.  363. 


40 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


and  heart,  between  thought  and  conscience,  between 
admiration  of  the  beautiful  and  worship  of  the  holy. 
Ah !  well  do  I  know  that  culture,  in  its  truest  and 
highest  sense,  is  ever  stretching  out  its  hands  towards 
the  infinitude  which  faith  apprehends,  towards  the  High 
and  Holy  One  who  inhabiteth  eternity,  and  whom 
faith  adores.  There  are  no  doubt  men  who  can  cover 
up  moral  turpitude  under  a  veil  of  outward  beauty. 
There  are  men  who  can  dwell  in  a  region  of  literary 
trifling.  There  are  those  who  can  be  so  absorbed  in 
some  special  scientific  pursuit  as  to  be  indifferent  to 
all  that  lies  beyond.  It  is  not  the  less  true  that  as 
the  mind  strives  to  see  and  the  soul  uplifts  itself  to 
feel  the  wonder  and  glory  of  the  universe,  it  touches 
at  every  point  the  shores  of  the  infinite  mystery,  the 
sphere  which  religion  claims  as  its  own — the  dread 
magnificence  of  the  cosmic  life,  the  awful  forms  of 
conscience  and  of  duty,  the  solemn  darkness  of  sorrow, 
the  profound  abyss  of  evil,  and  all  the  insoluble  pro- 
blems of  our  being. 

And  where  this  is  so,  culture  and  faith  have  already 
clasped  each  other's  hands,  although  standing  yet  with 
half-averted  faces,  while  the  light  from  heaven  is  fall- 
ing upon  both.  Socrates  combined  the  keenest  of 
intellects  with  an  apostolic  fervour  and  a  fealty  to 
conscience  which  were  Christian  before  Christianity. 
Plato  beheld  all  human  life  and  all  the  world  of 


CULTURE  AND  FAITH. 


41 


nature  in  the  light  of  eternity^  and  the  genius  of  the 
poet-philosopher  has  coloured  both  the  language  and 
the  thought  of  the  deepest  of  our  Gospels.  Philo-  ^ 
sophy  in  the  firsi  century  of  the  Christian  era  had 
become  mystical,  devout,  spiritual.  In  our  own  day, 
some  of  the  loftiest  minds  in  the  world  of  science  are 
drawn  by  an  irresistible  fascination  to  deal  with  the 
problems  of  theology.  ^^A  light  that  never  was  on 
sea  or  land  "  falls  on  the  highest  thinking  of  the  age, 
and  touches  as  with  *^  the  consecration  and  the  poet's 
dream."  And  amidst  much  that  is  perplexing,  much 
that  is  painful,  in  the  attitude  of  modern  thought 
towards  traditional  forms  of  belief,  I  cannot  but  see 
here  the  approximation  of  culture  to  faith. 

"  What,  then,  shall  we  say  of  faith  ?  Ah !  my 
brethren,  I  should  not  be  dealing  honestly  with  my 
subject  if  I  did  not  avow  my  conviction  that,  in  this 
schism  between  culture  and  faith,  the  fault  is  not 
solely  on  the  side  of  culture.  The  faith  which,  in  it-s 
innermost  core,  is  an  ineradicable  element  of  human 
nature,  an  apprehension  of  the  Infinite,  an  intuition 
of  God,  a  sense  of  weakness  and  dependence,  a  cry  of 
sorrow  and  a  confession  of  sin,  a  reaching  forth  after 
immortality,  a  worship  of  supreme  goodness, — who  can 
deny  that  this  faith  in  its  historical  development 
becomes  encrusted  with  superstitions  and  overgrown 
with  errors  and  ignorances  which  form  no  part  of  its 


42 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


real  nature?  Christianity  itself,  the  highest  and 
holiest  embodiment  of  faith,  is  no  exception  to  this 
fact.  And  if  faith  is  to  permeate  culture,  it  must 
borrow  from  culture  all  things  that  are  honest,  just, 
pure,  and  lovely  —  looking  upon  them  not  as  the 
works  of  the  Devil  and  the  fruit  of  human  corruption, 
but  as  the  good  and  perfect  gifts  which  come  down 
from  the  Father  of  lights.  We  must  cease  to  resist 
with  blind  tenacity  and  passionate  zeal  the  sure 
teachings  of  science  and  the  certain  results  of  criticism. 
We  must  give  up  our  Bibliolatry,  and  strive  to  under- 
stand the  Book  of  which  we  make  a  fetish.  In  the 
language  of  Thomas  Carlyle:  ''First  must  the  dead 
letter  of  religion  own  itself  dead  and  drop  piecemeal 
into  dust,  if  the  living  spirit  of  religion,  freed  from 
this  its  charnel-house,  is  to  arise  on  us  new-born  from 
heaven,  and  with  new  healing  under  its  wings." 

And  so  may  we  believe  that  it  yet  shall  be. 
The  dawn  of  a  purer  faith,  truer  to  the  spirit  of  the 
world-regenerating  life  and  death  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
is  already  faintly  kindling  in  the  sky;  and  as  I  turn  in 
thought  from  the  Apostle  m  Athens  to  the  far-reaching 
words  of  the  Master  Himself,  I  think  of  those  parables 
in  which  He  foreshadowed  the  spiritual  future  of  His 
faith  as  drawing  all  that  is  human  into  God,  as  incor- 
porating and  blending  into  its  own  being  all  things 
everywhere  that  are  good,  and  bright,  and  fair, — the 


CULTURE  AND  FAITH. 


43 


pearl  merchant  seeking  the  goodly  pearls  that  are  akin 
to  the  pearl  of  great  price, — the  leaven  that  assimilates 
to  itself,  by  the  force  of  its  own  restless  life,  everything 
but  grit, — the  grain  of  mustard-seed  which,  drawing  its 
nutriment  from  common  earth  and  air,  grows  into  an 
overshadowing  tree,  whose  very  leaves  are  for  the  heal- 
ing of  the  nations. 


III. 

SENSUOUS  AND  SPIRITUAL  RELIGION. 


4 


"Wherewith  shall  I  come  before  the  Lord,  and  bow  myself  before 
the  High  God?  Shall  I  come  before  Him  with  burnt-offerings,  with 
calves  of  a  year  old?  Will  the  Lord  be  pleased  with  thousands  of 
rams  or  with  ten  thousands  of  rivers  of  oil?  Shall  I  give  my  first- 
born for  my  transgression,  the  fruit  of  my  body  for  the  sin  of  my 
soul?  He  hath  showed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good:  and  what  doth 
the  Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to 
walk  humbly  with  thy  God." — Micah  (vi.  6-8). 

Tu  Gfcj  del  ndvrag  aKo7.ovdeiv  ml  depaTTsveiv  avrbv  acKovvrag  ape- 
TTjv  rpoTTog  yap  Qaov  depandag  ovtoq  oatuTaTog.^' — JoSEPHUS  {Contra 
Apron,  ii.  22). 

"  A?JJ  evo/ui^e  (Socrates)  rovg  deovg  raig  Tzapd  ruv  evaelitcTdruv  ri- 
fj.a'ig  iid7ucra  ;\;a'ip£iv.'' — Xenophon  {Memorah.  1,  3,  3).- 

"  Quin  damus  id  Superis,  de  magna  quod  dare  lance 
Non  possit  magni  Messallse  lippa  propago : 
Compositum  jus  fasque  animo  sanctosque  recessus 
Mentis  et  incoctum  generoso  pectus  honesto. 
Hsec  cedo  ut  admoveam  templis  et  farre  litabo." 

Peesius  [Satir.  ii.  71-75). 


III. 


"  Therefore  disputed  he  in  the  synagogue  with  the  Jews  and  with 
the  devout  persons,  and  in  the  market-place  daily  with  them 
that  met  him.  .  .  .  And  they  took  him  and  brought  him  unto 
Areopagus." — Acts  xvii.  17,  19. 

The  practice  of  St.  Paul  in  his  missionary  work  had 
been,  up  to  this  time,  to  seek  out  in  any  heathen  city 
his  own  countrymen,  and  the  proselytes  who  gathered 
around  the  synagogue,  in  order,  if  possible,  to  make 
these  the  nucleus  of  a  Christian  congregation.  But  in 
Athens  he  was  seized  with  an  overmastering  impulse 
to  speak  directly  to  that  Hellenic  world  which  was 
still  wholly  uninfluenced  by  Hebrew  beliefs.  Dissatis- 
fied with  addressing  himself  to  a  mere  handful  of  Jews 
and  proselytes,  "  he  disputed  in  the  market-place  daily 
with  them  that  met  with  him,"  whether  they  were 
Jews  or  Greeks,  strangers  or  Athenians. 

Now  this  bold  plunge  into  the  stream  of  Hellenic 
thought  and  life,  in  swimming  against  which  he  was 
supported  only  by  the  buoyancy  of  his  faith,  was  alike 
an  epoch  in  the  spiritual  history  of  the  man  and  in 

that  of  the  religion  which  he  preached.    It  was  the 

47 


48 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


severance  of  one  more  link  in  the  cHain  which  still 
bound  him  to  the  Church  of  Jewish ,  origin  and  sym- 
pathies in  Jerusalem.  It  was  the  first  public  and 
direct  conflict  between  Christianity  and  Paganism."^ 
And  it  was,  besides  all  this,  an  example  in  a  most 
striking  and  impressive  way  of  the  distinction  between 
sensuous  and  spiritual  religion,  between  the  religion 
which  appeals  to  the  senses  and  the  religion  which 
appeals  to  the  conscience,  between  that  which  minis- 
ters to  the  lower  and  that  which  ministers  to  the 
higher  nature  of  man.  Athens  was  the  most  splendid 
type  of  the  one ;  the  other  was  proclaimed  most  clearly 
and  intelligibly  by  the  Apostle,  who  understood  the 
spirit  and  aim  of  his  Master  as  neither  the  twelve  nor 
the  Church  of  Jerusalem  understood  it,  preaching  a 
faith  which  has  no  limitation  of  time  or  place,  which 
has  its  seat  neither  in  holy  city  nor  in  sacred  temple, 
but  in  the  moral  nature  of  God  and  in  the  profoundest 
needs  and  aspirations  of  man. 

At  first,  indeed,  it  seemed  as  if  this  bold  experiment 
were  a  failure.  St.  Paul's  success  in  Athens  was,  to 
say  the  least,  not  great — nothing  like  his  past  success 
in  Thessalonica  and  Bersea — his  successes  yet  to  come 
in  Corinth.  The  idolatrous  worship  of  Athens  was 
more  than  a  match,  to  all  outward  appearance,  for 


1  Milman. 


SENSUOUS  AXD  SPIRITUAL  RELIGION.  49 


the  spiritual  faith  of  the  Apostle.  It  was,  however, 
the  occasion  of  what  Dean  Milman  has  called  '^perhaps 
the  most  extensively  and  permanently  effective  oration 
ever  uttered  by  man," — the  speech  on  the  Areopagus. 

The  first  impression  made  by  his  discussions  in  the 
market-place,  where  all  the  idlers,  strangers  as  well 
as  Athenians,  gathered  in  knots  to  hear  or  tell  the 
news,  was  that  of  curiosity.  In  this  city  of  culture, 
where  elegance  was  upon  the  whole  more  prized  than 
truth,  and  where  men  regarded  less  what  a  man  said 
than  how  he  said  it,  St.  Paul  spoke  at  a  disadvantage. 
Hebrew,  not  Greek,  was  his  mother-tongue.  His 
was  not  the  ready  flowing  speech  of  the  Alexandrian 
Apollos.  ^'With  stammering  lips  and  another  tongue" 
he  spoke  to  the  Athenian  people,  the  very  vehemence 
of  his  nature,  charged  with  a  truth  too  big  for  utter- 
ance, involving  his  sentences  and  tripping  up  his 
words.  And  so  the  hearers  laughed  when  he  mis- 
placed an  accent  or  mispronounced  his  Greek.  Yet 
somehow  the  light  Athenian  was  moved,  not  very  pro- 
foundly, it  is  true,  still  he  was  moved  by  the  deep,  im- 
passioned earnestness  of  the  man,  piercing  like  light- 
ning from  heaven  through  the  veil  of  his  foreign 
speech.  "  He  is  a  '  babbler'  no  doubt, — a  'setter  forth 
of  strange  gods  '  as  likely  as  not.  Still,  '  we  would 
know'  a  little  better  Svhat  these  things  mean.'"  And 
so,  half  in  earnest  half  in  jest,  they  conducted  him. 


50 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


somewhat  reluctantly  apparently  on  his  part,  to  the 
open  space  on  the  hill  of  the  Areopagus,  a  spot  which 
classic,  and,  from  this  time,  Christian  associations  have 
alike  made  holy  ground. 

The  great  picture  of  Eaffaelle  of  St.  Paul  preaching 
on  the  Areopagus,  in  the  fulness  of  manly  strength  and 
beauty,  surrounded  by  the  statues  of  gods  and  heroes, 
will  rise  to  the  memory  of  most  of  those  who  hear 
me.  The  spiritual  grandeur  of  that  memorable  scene 
far  outweighs  its  poetic  beauty.  With  the  waning 
glory  of  a  dying  creed  are  blending  the  dawning 
lights  of  the  newly-risen  Sun  of  righteousness.  The 
hill  on  which  St.  Paul  stood,  a  narrow  ridge  of  lime- 
stone rock,  with  the  Acropolis,  crowned  with  the  Par- 
thenon, looking  down  upon  it,  had  been,  and  per- 
haps still  was,  the  seat  of  the  sacred  court  of  the 
Areopagus,  which,  before  Pericles  had  shorn  it  of  its 
power,  had  exercised  supreme  religious  jurisdiction  in 
Athens.  Still  are  to  be  seen,  hewn  out  of  the  rock, 
the  seats  of  the  judges;  and  to  this  place,  hallowed  by 
the  memories  of  the  past,  the  Athenians,  with  mock 
solemnity,^  brought  St.  Paul  to  plead  the  cause  of  the 
new  faith  on  the  spot  consecrated  by  the  old.  With 
the  shadows  of  the  great  ages  which  were  gone 
falling  around  him,  with  his   own  spirit  kindling 

iSee  Baur,  "Paulus  der  Apostel  Jesu  Christi,"  i  193,  194,  ed.  Zeller" 
1866. 


SENSUOUS  AND  SPIRITUAL  RELIGION.  51 


with  hope  for  the  future,  he  pleaded  for  God  aud  for 
Christ. 

Thus  the  relio-ion  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  on  its 
trial  in  the  person  of  His  apostle  before  the  splendid 
cultus  of  Paganism  and  the  keen  intellect  of  philo- 
sophy. On  both  these  points  I  hope  to  say  something 
in  succeeding  sermons.  At  present,  I  take  the  contrast 
which  presents  itself  on  the  surface — the  contrast 
between  the  religion  that  is  outward  and  the  religion 
that  is  inward — the  religion  of  ritual  and  the  religion 
of  mind — the  religion  of  Athens  in  her  decline  and 
the  religion  of  Christ  in  the  freshness  of  its  youth. 

For,  my  brethren,  the  worship  of  the  Athenian  had 
become  in  these  latter  days  almost  wholly  a  worship 
of  outward  form — graceful  and  beautiful,  appealing 
to  the  senses  by  the  glitter  and  fascination  of  its  varied 
pomp,  appealing  to  the  fancy  and  the  imagination, 
but  not  appealing  to  the  reason  or  the  conscience.  It 
was,  in  its  origin,  the  consecration  of  patriotism  and 
of  the  institutions  of  the  city.  No  doubt  it  had  had 
in  the  past  deeper  elements — some  sense  of  the  awful 
mystery  of  human  life  and  of  human  suffering  such  as 
jEschylus  depicts,  some  sense  of  the  unwritten  laws  of 
Divine  justice  and  of  the  nobleness  of  obedience  to 
the  behests  of  duty  which  makes  Sophocles  almost 
Christian;  but  these  deeper  elements  had  detached 
themselves  in  time  from  religion  to  blend  with  philo- 


52 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHE^^S. 


sopliy,  and  to  sanctify  the  priesthood  of  literature.  The 
worship,  stripped  of  all  its  better  faiths  and  of  all  its 
loftier  ideas,  became  more  and  more  sensuous — a  glitter- 
ing pomp  and  ceremonial  which  gratified  the  eye  and 
agreeably  diversified  the  graver  work  of  life — but  which 
was  utterly  destitute  of  all  moral  power  over  the  heart 
of  the  worshipper. 

Thought  and  conduct  were  wholly  divorced  from 
cult.    No  man,  except,  perhaps,  he  wished  to  jus- 
tify some  disgraceful  act,  seriously  appealed  to  the 
current  beliefs  about  the  gods,  whose  statues  stood 
in  every  street ;  no  man  joined  in  procession,  hymn, 
or  mystery,  with  any  thought  of  becoming  better, 
or  with  any  idea  of  governing  his  life  by  his  re- 
ligion.   For  views  about  the  universe  or  the  spirit 
of  the  universe,  men  went  not  to  the  temples,  but 
to  the  schools.    For  principles  and  rules  of  life  they 
sought  out  the  philosophers,  not  the  priests.  Yet 
this — the  performance  of  acts  which  had  lost  their 
meaning,  which  had  no  elevating  influence  on  men's 
conceptions  of  the  Invisible,  but  rather  detained  them 
in  the  w^orld  of  sight,  which  suggested  little  or  nothing 
of  hope  or  fear  for  the  future,  little  or  nothing  for 
the  guidance  of  the  present, — this,  clothed  with  the 
charms  and  splendours  of  architecture  and  of  sculpture, 
bright  with  gay  processions,  festal  seasons,  sacrifices, 
chant,  and  hymn,  this  was  religion,  and  it  was  rehgion 


SENSUOUS  AXD  SPIRITUAL  RELIGION. 


53 


such  as  this  that  St.  Paul  confronted  on  the  Areopagus 
with  a  faith  that  touched  the  depths  of  the  human 
souh 

Yes,  the  faith  which  St.  Paul  preached  on  that 
memorable  occasion  was  a  faith  which,  piercing  through 
the  shoAvs  of  sense,  went  at  once  to  the  heart  of  things, 
and  made  its  appeal  to  the  reason,  the  spiritual  in- 
stincts, and  the  moral  convictions  of  men.  One  thing 
strikes  us  forcibly  as  we  read  this  marvellous  dis- 
course. St.  Paul  strove  to  understand  Athenian 
idolatry  before  he  condemned  it.  Guided  by  the  light 
within  his  own  soul,  by  the  intuitions  of  a  heart  which 
yearned  to  liberate  all  men  from  the  yoke  of  ignorance 
and  sin,  he  recognized  the  possible  good  as  well  as  the 
actual  evil  of  all  this  pomp  of  sensuous  worship.  Some- 
where underlying  it  all,  he  believed,  however  stifled 
by  its  superincumbent  w^eight,  was  the  vague  craving 
for  God  and  the  power  to  discern  between  evil  and 
good.  In  all  this  he  beheld  the  misdirection  and  abuse 
of  that  religious  faculty  which  has  been  implanted 
deep  in  the  heart  of  man  by  God  Himself. 

"  Ye  men  of  Athens,  I  perceive  that  in  all  things 
ye  are  exceedingly  devout."  So  the  Apostle  begins 
his  sermon.  He  appeals  to  no  external  authority^ 
to  no  priesthood,  to  no  book,  to  no  tradition  of 
Pharisee  or  of  scribe,  as  he  endeavours  to  convince 
these  men  of  the  misdirection  of  their  worship.  He 


54 


^7'.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


appeals  to  the  hidden  man  of  the  heart,  and  thus  he 
summons  the  idolatries  of  Athens  before  the  tribunal 
of  reason. 

"  In  God  we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our  being : 
as  certain  of  your  own  poets  have  said," — Cleanthes 
or  Aratus, — " '  For  we  are  also  His  offspring.'  For- 
asmuch, then,  as  we  are  the  offspring  of  God,  we  ought 
not  to  think  that  the  Godhead  is  like  unto  gold,  or 
silver,  or  stone,  graven  by  art  or  man's  device."  He 
sees  thai  all  this  multiplicity  of  religious  symbols,  so 
distracting  to  the  worshippers,  all  this  crowd  of  gods 
and  of  deified  men,  betrays  the  hidden  weakness,  the 
unsatisfying  nature  of  their  creed.  "  As  I  passed  by 
and  beheld  the  gods  that  ye  worship,  I  found  an  altar 
with  this  inscription.  To  an  Unknown  God.  Whom 
therefore  ye  worship  and  yet  know  not.  Him  declare  I 
unto  you;"  the  "God"  who  "made  the  world,  and  all 
things  therein;"  "the  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,"  who 
"dwelleth  not  in  temples  made  with  hands;"  "who  is 
not  far  from  every  one  of  us;"  whom  we,  His  offspring, 
who  have  our  very  being  rooted  in  His,  ought  to  wor- 
ship, not  by  costly  oblation,  not  by  offering,  altar,  fane, 
or  statue,  but  by  seeking  and  feeling  after  and  so  find- 
ing Him;  by  a  devotion  that  is  mental  and  spiritual 
like  His  own  Nature.  That  Unknown  God  is  the 
living  God,  who  has  bound  into  one  vast  brotherhood 
all  nations  of  men  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  shaping 


SENSUOUS  AND  SPIRITUAL  RELIGION.  55 


and  guiding  their  destiny;  a  God  of  living  hearts,  re- 
vealing Himself  in  our  better  thoughts  and  higher 
aspirations,  not  in  the  plastic  art  that  moulds  the 
metal  or  the  stone. 

Under  all  this  cheerful  devotion"  (as  Gibbon 
calls  it)  of  the  Greek,  under  all  this  light,  festive, 
frivolous  attitude  of  the  Athenian  towards  the  mys- 
tery that  besets  us  behind  and  before,  St.  Paul  knows 
that  there  is  latent  in  the  deep  places  of  our  being 
a  sense  of  responsibility,  some  vague  idea  of  a  life 
to  come,  of  a  judgment  after  death.  *'God  now 
commandeth  all  men  everywhere  to  repent."  And 
though  the  sudden  interruption  of  his  speech  has  left 
it  incomplete,  we  can  see  that,  in  the  background  of 
his  thought  lies  the  idea  of  the  Beloved  Son,  whose 
life  and  death  of  self-offering  unto  God  has  lifted 
religion  into  the  sphere  where  duty,  under  the  form 
of  trust  and  of  love,  has  made  all  mere  external 
worship  weak  and  poor. 

Thus  St.  Paul  spiritualised  religion,  the  Athenian 
sensualised  it,  Now  let  us  understand  this.  The 
essential  distinction  between  sensuous  and  spiritual 
religion  lies  not  in  the  use  of  forms,  for  spiritual 
religion  also  uses  forms;  nor  even  of  necessity  in  the 
kind  of  forms  used,  although  in  this,  too,  there  is  a 
natural  harmony  between  spiritual  religion  and  the 
outward  type  in  which  it  expresses  itself.    The  real 


56 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


distinction  lies  in  the  place  wliich  is  given  to  form 
in  the  mind  of  the  worshipper, 

St.  Paul's  quarrel  with  Athenian  religion  was  not 
with  the  use  of  artistic  beauty  in  the  service  of 
religion,  but  with  the  fact  that  the  outward  symbol, 
with  all  its  grace  and  splendour,  was  the  substitute 
for  the  reality  of  a  spiritual  faith.  Accidentally,  of 
course,  the  Apostle  condemned  the  very  symbols  em- 
ployed, partly  because  their  multiplicity  implied  the 
multiplicity  of  the  objects  of  worship,  opposing  ''gods 
many  and  lords  many"  to  the  One  living  God,  Lord 
of  heaven  and  earth;  and  still  more,  because  all  this 
symbolism  was  the  futile  attempt  to  give  outward 
shape  and  type  to  the  Invisible  Presence  of  whom 
all  this  visible  universe  is  but  the  scintillation  of  His 
glory — is  but  the  hem  and  skirt  of  His  garment. 

Still  the  condemnation  of  the  forms  of  Greek  rehgion 
is  merely  accidental.  We  cannot  escape  from  form. 
We  can  but  recognise  its  imperfections  and  inadequacy. 
The  most  spiritual  faith  must  find  for  itself  a  fitting 
vesture.  The  purest  devotion,  when  it  passes  from 
silence  into  words  and  acts,  must  clothe  itself  in  forms 
which  sense  furnishes.  Even  primitive  Christianity 
did  not  wholly  discard  the  aids  of  art.  The  immortal 
youth  of  Apollo  suggested  the  figure  of  the  Good 
Shepherd.  The  crowns  and  palms  of  the  Olympic 
conquerors  became  the  symbols  of  Christian  victory. 


SENSUOUS  AXB  SPIRITUAL  RELIGION.  57 


The  ship  ploughing  her  way  through  tempestuous 
seas  was  the  type  of  the  Christian  life.  The  cross  was 
the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  the  offering  of  self 
to  God.  And  we,  too,  may  worship  Him  under  forms 
and  symbols  which,  however  inadequate,  need  not  be 
mean.  We  can  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth  at  least 
as  easily  in  a  cathedral  a,s  in  a  barn, — with  noble 
architecture  and  sacred  chant  and  song,  with  an 
atmosphere  of  beauty  breathed  around  us,  quite  as 
readily  as  within  four  whitewashed  walls.  Spiritual 
religion  allies  itself  with  the  spirit  of  beauty,  takes 
up  into  itself  and  consecrates  by  its  own  heavenly 
presence  the  forms  in  which  it  is  clothed  and  the 
words  in  which  it  finds  its  utterance.  Not  in  the  use 
of  forms,  and  not  in  the  baldness  or  in  the  beauty  of 
outward  worship,  lies  the  distinction  between  the 
religion  that  is  sensuous  and  the  religion  which  is 
spiritual. 

No;  the  distinction  lies  a  great  deal  deeper  than 
this.  In  this  sermon  on  the  mount  of  the  Areopagus, 
breathing  the  very  spirit  of  a  still  greater  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  in  G-alilee,  the  Apostle  of  Jesus  Christ  is 
setting  the  religion  of  reason,  of  conscience,  of  holy 
aspirations  and  devout  affections,  over  against  the 
religion  which  wove  around  the  worshipper  a  many- 
coloured  veil  of  graceful  imagery,  but  which  never 
touched    the   moral    nature,   which    gave   him  no 


58 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


victory  over  himself^  and  brought  him  no  nearer  to 
God.  The  most  spiritual  religion  is  fain  to  express 
itself  in  forms  which  are  borrowed  from  the  things 
which  eye  hath  seen  and  ear  hath  heard;  but  sensuous 
religion  substitutes  the  things  which  eye  hath  seen 
and  ear  hath  heard  for  the  things  which  the  eye  hath 
not  seen  and  the  ear  hath  not  heard. 

That  is  sensuous  religion  which  gives  to  the  outward 
form  the  place  which  is  due  to  God,  which  is  indifferent 
to  the  moral  nature  of  the  object  worshipped  so  long  as 
the  ritual  of  worship  is  punctually  performed — in  which 
the  act  of  worship  is  everything,  the  object  of  worship 
nothing.  The  virgin  goddess  or  the  sea-born  Aphrodite, 
what  did  it  matter  so  that  the  offering  was  duly  paid, 
the  hymn  sung,  the  procession  accomplished,  the  sacri- 
fice presented?  That  is  sensuous  religion  in  which 
the  end  is  mainly  if  not  wholly  the  temporary  stimulus 
of  the  imagination  and  of  the  emotions — not  the 
cultivation  of  rational  conceptions,  of  faith  purified 
from  superstition,  of  affections  habitually  devout,  of 
earnest  moral  purpose,  of  the  constraining  influence  of 
a  holy  ideal  in  the  work  of  our  everyday  lives.  And 
that  is  spiritual  religion  which  places  God  above  every 
form  of  worship — which  uses  forms  merely  as  helps  to 
rise  to  Him — which  strives  to  be  pure  in  heart  and  so 
to  see  God — which  aims  at  consecrating  every  faculty 
to  Him    which  seeks  to  understand  that  which  maybe 


SENSUOUS  AXD  SPIRITUAL  RELIGION.  59 


known  of  God,  and  to  trust  witli  the  fearless  confidence 
of  love  the  mystery  which  cannot  be  known — which 
cherishes  the  noble  aspiration,  and  endeavours  to  make 
it  a  thing  of  flesh  and  blood  in  this  work-day  world. 
Sensuous  religion  hides  God  :  spiritual  religion  reveals 
Him.  Sensuous  religion  begins  and  ends  in  sense. 
Spiritual  religion  makes  an  unseen  presence  of  supreme 
goodness  the  life  and  light  of  the  soul. 

And  so  far  as  what  is  called  Christianity  has  A 
divorced,  itself,  in  this  age  or  in  any  other,  in  our 
own  Church  or  any  other  Church,  from  the  highest 
reason  and  from  conscience,  so  far  has  it  become 
the  very  thing  on  which  St.  Paul  gazed  in  x\thens 
with  wonder  and  with  pity.  The  tide  of  living 
faith  has  ebbed  and  left  the  outward  form  stranded 
on  the  shore.  Men  have  always  differed,  perhaps 
always  will  differ,  as  to  what  may  be  the  best 
external  pattern  and  fashion  of  worship.  Such 
differences  of  opinion  and  sentiment  are  in  them- 
selves of  the  slightest  possible  moment,  and  ought  to 
be  tolerated  on  both  sides  with  the  utmost  latitude  of 
charity.  The  grand  question  is,  "What  and  whom  do 
we  worship?  and  with  what  manner  of  intellectual 
vision,  moral  purpose,  devout  affection,  and  noble 
conduct  do  we  honour  Him  ?  And  the  future  of  the 
Church  lies,  in  spite  of  blind  obstructiveness,  in  spite 
of  blind  reaction,  not  with  those  who  are  striving  to 


60 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


resuscitate  outworn  creeds,  or  to  adapt  to  modern  life 
the  cast-off  garments  of  the  past,  but  with  those  who 
are  endeavouring  to  develop  the  spiritual  elements  of 
faith  in  harmony  with  the  highest  truth  which  man 
can  reach,  in  affinity  with  the  noblest  spirit  man  can 
breathe. 


IV. 


PAGANISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY : 
FIRST  CENTURY  A.  D. 


"Quum  omnibus  in  rebus  temeritas  in  assentiendo  errorque  turpis 
est,  turn  in  eo  loco  maxima,  in  quo  judicandum  est,  quantum  auspi- 
ciis  rebusque  divinis  religionique  tribuamus.  Est  enim  periculum 
ne  aut  neglectis  iis  irapia  fraude,  aut  susceptis  anili  superstitione 
obligeraur." — Cicero  {De  Divinatione,  i.  4). 

"  The  Apostolic  writings  present  us  with  the  most  astonishing  mo- 
ral phenomenon  that  human  history  exhibits.  The  intensity  of  the 
moral  heat  is  something  scarcely  comprehensible  by  us." — Donald- 
son (Critical  History  of  Christian  Literature,  i.  50). 

"A  Pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn." — Wordsworth. 

"Quando  amore  viene  in  sulla  terra,  sceglie  i  cuori  piii  teneri  e 
piu  gentili  delle  persone  piii  generose  e  magnanime:  e  quivi  siede 
per  brevo  spazio:  diffondendovi  si  pellegrina  e  mirabile  soavitk  ed 
empirendoli  di  affetti  si  nobili  e  di  tanta  virtu  e  fortezza,  che  eglino 
allora  provano  cosa  altutto  nuova  nel  genere  umano,  piuttosto  verity 
che  rassomiglianza  di  beatitudine." — Giacomo  Leopardi  [Storia 
del  Genere  Umano). 


IV. 


"  Certain  philosophers  of  the  Epicureans,  and  of  the  Stoics, 
encountered  him.  .  .  .  Then  Paul  stood  in  the  midst  of 
Mars  Hill,  and  said,  Ye  men  of  Athens,  I  perceive  that  in 
all  things  ye  are  too  superstitious." — Acts  xvii.  18,  22. 

The  Greek  and  Roman  civilisation  in  the  first  century 
of  the  Christian  era  bears,  in  several  of  its  features, 
more  than  a  superficial  resemblance  to  the  mental  and 
religious  life  of  our  own  day.  One  characteristic  of 
the  age  was  the  co-existence  of  superstition  and  of 
unbelief.  The  cultivated  few  were  all  but  wholly 
alienated  from  the  religion  of  the  state :  the  multitude 
thronged  the  temples  of  the  gods.  We  should  read, 
however,  the  signs  of  those  times — as,  indeed,  we 
should  read  the  signs  of  our  own  times — far  too 
hastily  if  we  were  to  assume  that  superstition  and 
unbelief  divide  the  empire  of  the  world  between  them, 
and  leave  no  room  for  any  intermediate  thing.  There 
are  two  facts  conspicuous  in  this  critical  period  of  the 
history  of  human  development  which  seem  to  me  fairly 
to  prove  that  the  fountain  of  spiritual  life  in  the  soul 
of  man  is  not  capable  of  being  permanently  dried  up 


63 


64 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


under  either  of  these  influences.  The  first  of  these 
facts  is^  that  at  this  time  philosophy,  or,  to  speak  more 
accurately,  the  Platonic  and  Stoical  schools  of  philo- 
sophy, had  become — less,  perhaps,  in  Athens  than  in 
Eome — spiritual  and  religious  rather  than  speculative, 
breathing  a  tender,  devout  enthusiasm,  which  stands 
in  marked  contrast  with  the  more  purely  intellectual 
discussions  of  an  earlier  age.  The  second  fact  is  the 
rise  and  progress  of  Christianity,  triumphing  mainly 
by  its  own  inherent  moral  force  alike  over  superstition 
and  unbelief.  And  both  these  facts  are  encouraging  to 
those  who,  in  the  present  day,  believe  that  God  has 
reserved  for  the  human  race  some  better  thing  than 
either  the  total  abandonment  of  faith  in  Him  or 
endless  wandering  in  the  mazes  of  blind  irrational 
credulity. 

Of  these  two  extremes,  Athens,  at  the  time  of  St. 
Paul's  visit,  furnishes  us  with  a  conspicuous  example. 
She  was  at  once  the  seat  of  religious  worship  and  of 
the  philosophical  schools — at  once  eminently  devout 
and  eminently  tolerant  of  speculative  unbelief — the 
place  where,  of  all  others.  Paganism  seemed  most  firmly 
rooted,  and  yet  also  the  place  where  men  discussed 
with  the  utmost  latitude  and  freedom  questions  which 
struck  at  its  root. 

Athens,  no  doubt,  had  not  always  been  thus  tolerant. 
Without  mentioning  the  names  of  others,  the  fate  of 


PAGAXISM  AXD  CHRISTIANITY. 


65 


SocrateS;  condemned  to  death  for  not  worshipping  the 
gods  whom  the  city  worships,  and  for  introducing  new 
divinities  of  his  own/'  will  occur  to  every  one.  But 
in  the  age  of  St.  Paul,  Athens  was  intolerant  no  more, 
convinced,"  says  Gibbon,  ''by  the  experience  of  ages, 
that  the  moral  character  of  philosophers  is  not  affected 
by  the  diversity  of  their  theological  speculations." 

All  opinions,  of  what  kind  soever,  might  now  be 
fearlessly  propounded  in  Athens.  All  negations  and 
all  assertions  might  propagate  themselves  as  they 
could.  Every  foreign  cult,  the  worship  of  all  sorts 
of  strange  gods,  Syrian,  Egyptian,  and  Persian,  was 
tolerated,  provided  only  these  exotic  forms  of  faith 
made  no  attempt  to  interfere  with  the  national  ritual. 
A  Jewish  synagogue  was  planted  here  without  moles- 
tation. Here  also  grew  up  a  Christian  Church ;  and 
though  St.  Paul  "  seemed  to  be  a  setter  forth  of  strange 
gods" — the  very  charge  which  cost  Socrates  his  life 
— and  though  St.  Paul  preached,  in  terms  not  to  be 
mistaken,  the  nothingness  of  the  deities  of  Athens,  the 
Athenians  only  laughed,  regarding  him  as  a  harmless 
enthusiast,  not  as  a  dangerous  heretic.  Through  nearly 
five  centuries  the  liberty  of  thought  survived  in  Athens. 
Christians  and  non-Christians  alike  frequented  her 
schools.  Almost  at  the  same  period  Julian,  who  as 
emperor  renounced  Christianity,  and  Libanius,  the 
heathen  sophist,  studied  wisdom  side  by  side  with  the 


66 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


Christian  fathers  St.  Basil  and  St.  Gregory  of  ISTazian- 
zum  ;  and  not  until  the  intolerance  which  called  itself 

A 

Christian  zeal — the  spurious  child  of  corrupt  theology 
and  Byzantine  despotism  —  struck  a  fatal  blow  at 
intellectual  freedom  when  Justinian  closed  the  schools 
of  philosophy,  did  Athens  cease  to  be  the  home  of 
liberal  culture. 

But  though  Athens  was  no  longer  intolerant,  she 
was  still  devout.  St.  Paul  spoke  the  truth  when  he 
said,  Ye  men  of  Athens,  I  perceive  that  in  all  things 
ye  are  exceedingly  devout," — god-fearing  beyond  other 
men,  "  excessively  addicted  to  the  worship  of  super- 
natural powers."-^  Side  by  side  with  a  scepticism  that 
questioned  all  things  human  and  divine,  which  denied 
the  possibility  of  our  knowing  anything  whatever, 
even  that  we  do  not  know  anything,  existed  an  out- 
ward religiousness  which  made  Josephus  describe  the 
Athenians  as  "  the  most  devout  of  all  the  Greeks," 
which  led  Pausanias  to  speak  to  them  as  "  excelling 
all  other  men  in  zeal  for  Divine  worship,"  and  which 
struck  the  mind  of  St.  Paul  himself  with  a  vehement 
emotion  of  surprise  and  sorrow.  For  Athens,  although 
a  city  of  widest  tolerance,  was  still  not  a  city  of 
philosophers  only,  but  a  city  of  priests — the  city,  above 
all,  of  the  Eleusinian  mysteries,  famed  through  all  the 


1  Merivale. 


PAGANISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY. 


67 


earth ;  city  of  religious  processions,  of  pomp  of  ritual, 
of  fragrance  of  incense  and  sacrifice,  of  magnificent 
temples,  of  consecrated  statues  of  gods  and  heroes. 
"It  is  wise  to  speak  well  of  all  the  gods,  especially  at 
Athens,"  was  the  saying  of  a  Pagan  mystic  half  a  cen- 
tury later.  In  all  this  Athens  was  the  type  and  repre- 
sentative of  the  Pagan  world  of  that  day. 

We  are  apt  to  think  of  that  time  as  an  age  of  utter 
scepticism,  of  total  and  all  but  universal  disbelief.  But 
this  is  a  mistake.  The  beliefs  of  Paganism,  in  some  or 
other  of  its  forms,  were  -still  alive,  except  in  the  minds 
of  a  very  small  minority.  The  Apostle,  whose  message 
was  received  with  incredulity  at  Athens  by  Epicureans 
and  Stoics,  was  well  nigh  worshipped  as  a  god  at 
Lystra.  While  among  the  educated  classes  positive 
science  and  philosophic  culture  had  swept  away  all 
faith  in  the  myths  and  legends  of  the  popular  theology, 
the  men,  women  and  children  of  the  country  districts 
and  of  the  villages  still  received  them  with  unhesi- 
tating credence ;  and  even  in  the  cities  the  old  faiths 
blended  in  the  minds  of  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
with  the  fresh  streams  of  supernatural  beliefs  which 
poured  in  from  the  East  with  astrology  and  magic,  with 
demonolatry  and  witchcraft,  with  invocations  of  the 
spirits  of  the  dead,  and  anticipations  of  the  approach- 
ing end  of  the  world.  In  Eome  there  came  in  under 
Augustus  a  marked  revival  of  ritualistic  religion. 


68 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


Temples  were  repaired  or  rebuilt.  Fallen  shrines  and 
dismantled  fanes  were  upr eared  again.  The  fanctions 
of  the  priesthood  were  once  more  active.  Men  flung 
themselves  once  more,  after  the  reign  of  terror  and 
the  horrors  of  the  Eoman  revolution,  at  the  feet  of  the 
gods,  with  the  feeling  embodied  in  the  utterance  of  our 
own  poet : — 

"  The  world  is  weary  of  the  past ; 
Oh  might  it  die  or  rest  at  last." 

And  thus,  in  the  very  teeth  of  a  scepticism  in  the  edu- 
cated classes  as  thoroughgoing  as  any  which  the  world 
has  ever  seen,  a  religion  sensuous,  ritualistic,  glitter- 
ing with  unrivalled  pomp  and  splendour,  revived  and 
swayed  with  a  potent  influence  the  outer  form  and 
fashion  of  men's  lives. 

And  now  observe,  in  this  world  of  such  ex- 
tremes, in  this  city  of  supreme  devoutness  and 
of  supreme  disbelief,  where  the  few  believed  no- 
thing and  the  multitude  believed  everything;  where 
gorgeous  ritual  and  mechanical  worship  drew  crowds 
to  temple  and  altar,  and  men  who  laughed  in  their 
sleeve  at  the  faith  of  the  vulgar  thronged  the  halls  of 
science  and  the  porticoes  of  philosophy,  appeared  a 
man  who  stood  aloof  from  both  extremes,  who  pro- 
claimed the  vanity  of  the  worship  that  shaped  the 
Godhead  under  the  forms  of  sense,  but  who  preached 
at  the  same  time  a  faith  which  made  its  appeal  to  the 


PAGANISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY. 


69 


consciences  and  the  hearts  of  men.  A  spiritual  reli- 
gion rose  upon  the  horizon  of  the  v/orld,  and  van- 
quished alike  its  superstition  and  its  unbelief.  At 
this  very  time  the  religious  revolution  was  preparing 
which  flooded  the  world  with  a  new  order  of  ideas 
and  a  fresh  ideal  of  life. 

St.  Paul,  standing  on  the  Areopagus,  preached  a 
faith  spiritual,  not  sensuous — a  faith  rooted  in  the 
conscience,  in  the  affections  and  sympathies,  in  the 
deepest  religious  instincts  of  men — a  faith  in  God, 
not  in  gods — in  a  living  Spirit,  not  in  *^gold  or 
silver  or  stone " — in  a  moral  responsibility,  in  a 
Divine  judgment  of  human  acts  and  thoughts,  in  life 
and  immortality,  in  a  perfect  love  and  righteousness 
at  war  with  the  sins,  but  in  sympathy  with  the 
souls  of  men.  And  the  fact  is  past  all  question  that 
this  spiritual  faith  which  St.  Paul  preached  won  its 
best  victories  in  those  its  earlier  days,  when  it  was 
purest,  when  the  intensity  of  its  moral  heat  was 
greatest,  when  its  forms  of  worship  were  simplest — 
prayer  and  praise  and  breaking  of  bread  in  the  upper 
chamber,  or  in  the  catacomb,  or  in  the  lecture-hall — 
when  it  had  no  systematic  theology,  when  priesthood 
it  had  none,  when  populace  and  magistrates  and  philo- 
sophers were  all  arrayed  against  it,  and  when  yet,  by 
simple  force  of  moral  suasion,  it  had  become  such  a 

living  power  in  the  heart  of  the  Eoman  Empire  that 
5 


70 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


it  had,  in  the  former  half  of  the  second  century,  in  one 
province  at  least,  in  the  province  of  Bithynia,  emptied 
the  temples,  ruined  the  trade  in  sheep  and  oxen  for 
sacrifice,  and  brought  to  a  standstill  all  the  routine  of 
Pagan  ritual.  "  So  mightily  grew  the  word  of  God  and 
prevailed." 

Here,  then,  my  brethren,  we  have  the  fact  that  in 
the  world  of  Pagan  superstitions  and  of  philosophic 
disbeliefs  sprang  up  a  religion  which,  while  discarding . 
superstition,  revived  faith,  and  which  in  some  form  or 
other  has  reigned  ever  since.  Surely  the  fact  is  one 
which  may  let  in  on  perplexed  minds  in  our  time 
some  ray  of  light  and  hope  for  the  religious  future  of 
the  world.  We  are  told  often  enough  in  our  own  day 
that  our  choice  lies  solely  between  these  two  extremes, 
— the  rejection  of  all  theological  ideas  whatever,  or 
the  contented,  unthinking  acquiescence  in  traditional 
dogma  and  ritual  routine.  We  are  assured  by  one 
school  of  thought  that  it  is  idle  to  attempt  to  disen- 
cumber religion  of  the  superstitions  that  incrust  it,  that 
every  such  attempt  is  mere  compromise  which  will 
inevitably  fail,  and  that  consistency  demands  that  we 
abandon  all  worship  as  futile,  and  adopt  a  non-theistic 
philosophy  of  the  universe.  ''Yes,"  says  the  Ultra- 
montane, "  your  sceptical  friend  is  so  far  right  that  the 
rejection  of  Papal  infallibility  and  of  the  sacrifice  of  the 
mass  involves  you  logically  in  the  atheism  in  which  it 


PAGANISM  AXB  CHRISTIANITY. 


71 


practically  lands  you."  And  it  would  be  difficult  to 
say  from  which  of  these  two  parties,  from  those  who 
believe  too  little,  or  from  those  who  believe  too  much, 
the  men  who  are  striving  to  purify  faith  from  super- 
stition receive  the  hardest  measure. 

Well,  it  is  not  the  first  time  that  things  such  as 
these  have  been  said.  In  the  age  of  Cicero,  about  a 
century  before  St.  Paul  preached  the  Unknown  God  to 
the  Athenians,  similar  arguments  were  bandied  to 
and  fro  in  theological  and  philosophical  discussions. 
Men  who  had  adopted  the  creed  of  Epicurus  said, 

There  is  nothing  to  worship."  No,"  said  the  ortho- 
dox Eoman,  who  pleaded  for  the  retention  of  the  whole 
Italian  mythology, — "  No,  there  is  nothing  to  worship 
if  we  let  go  the  customs  and  beliefs  of  our  ancestors." 
Cicero  himself  held  that  there  was  some  third  thing 
possible  between  believing  nothing  and  believing  all. 

It  is  easy,"  he  says,  ^'to  get  rid  of  superstition  when 
you  do  it  by  getting  rid  of  all  Divine  power."^  And 
Cicero  was  right,  although  he  little  dreamed  that  his 
own  somewhat  languid  belief  would  receive  in  the 
course  of  the  next  two  hundred  years  so  startling  a 
confirmation.    He  did  not  foresee  that  from  a  nation 


1  De  Nat.  Deor.,  i.  42, 117.  This,  I  think,  may  be  fairly  regarded  as  Cicero's 
own  sentiment.  "  Vim  Deorum  "  is,  of  course,  polytheistic.  The  rendering 
"Divine  power"  is  more  suitable  for  the  text,  being  equally  applicable  to 
Monotheism. 


72 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


which  he  heartily  despised  should  come  forth  a  living 
faith  in  a  Divine  power, — a  word  which,  originating  in 
the  carpenter's  shop,  and  preached  by  fishermen  and 
tent-makers,  should  vanquish  the  Paganism  which 
darkened  the  world,  should  triumph  over  Greek  and 
Italian  mythology,  Asiatic  sun-worship  and  philosophi- 
cal scepticism.  And  yet  this,  which  Cicero,  with  all  his 
reverence,  would  have  thought  impossible,  came  to  pass. 

Of  course  I  know  that  it  will  be  said  that  this  new 
religion  which  conquered  Paganism  was  itself  not  free 
from  superstition :  nay  more,  faith  in  the  living  God 
Himself  is  branded  by  some  as  only  another  form  of 
credulity,  somewhat  more  respectable,  but  not  one 
whit  more  rational,  than  the  Pagan's  homage  to  the 
sun.  Well,  my  brethren,  to  those  who  think  thus,  to 
those  who  believe  that  there  is  no  essential  difference 
between  idolatry  and  worshipping  Him  in  whom  "  we 
live  and  move  and  have  our  being,"  there  is  nothing 
more  to  be  said.  But  it  would  be  disingenuous  to  deny 
that  any  historical  faith  whatever  in  which  spiritual  in- 
tuition has  clothed  itself  has  ever  been  wholly  free 
from  admixture  of  error,  weakness,  and  ignorance. 
Around  the  cradle  of  Christianity  itself  gathered  Jew- 
ish narrowness  and  prejudice  which  went  near  to  stifle 
the  infant  faith.  Blended  with  the  higher  spirit  which 
primitive  Christianity  breathed  were  undoubtedly  many 
historical  misapprehensions,  anticipations  of  the  ap- 


PAG  Ay  ISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY. 


73 


proacliing  end  of  the  world,  belief  in  prodigies,  misin- 
terpretations of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  ready  credence 
rendered  to  the  Sibylline  predictions.  Tt  would  be, 
moreover,  to  set  history  at  defiance  to  deny  that  the. 
time  came  when  the  religion  that  had  conquered 
Paganism  became  almost  as  corrupt  as  the  Paganism 
which  it  supplanted,  and  far  more  intolerant. 

Nevertheless,  the  fact  remains  that  there  rose  up  in 
this  world  a  religion  which  protested  against  all  national 
and  local  limitation  of  religion;  which  refused  to  be 
bound  by  the  ritualism,  Jewish  or  Pagan,  which  was 
strangling  spiritual  life;  which,  at  least  in  its  second 
phase,  as  taught  by  St.  Paul,  placed  its  own  essence  in 
faith,  that  is,  in  the  spontaneous  and  free  play  of  all 
the  higher  aspirations  of  the  soul  and  in  the  adhesion 
of  the  individual  conscience  to  God;  which  revolted 
with  an  earnestness  and  intensity  which  have  never 
since  died  out  against  the  immoralities,  cruelties,  and 
sensualisms  of  the  Pagan  world;  which  ''spake  a  word 
in  season  unto  him  that  is  weary,"  coming  with  a 
message  of  love,  forgiveness,  and  hope  to  the  slave,  to 
the  poor,  to  women  and  children,  to  men  who  had 
nothing  to  live  for,  and  cared  not  whether  they  lived 
or  died;  which  preached  the  filiation  of  man  to  God 
and  the  love  of  God  to  man ;  which  lifted  the  idea  of 
immortality  out  of  the  region  of  scholastic  dispute  to 
make  it  the  hope  of  all  men;  which  inspired  so  intense 


74 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


and  glowing  a  spirit  of  moral  conviction,  that  (in  the 
language  of  Mr.  Lecky)  for  the  love  of  their  Divine 
Master,  for  the  cause  which  they  believed  to  be  true, 
men,  and  even  weak  girls,  endured  all  the  atrocities 
of  Pagan  persecutions  without  flinching,  when  one 
word  would  have  freed  them  from  their  sufferings ;  " 
which,  above  all,  created  a  fresh  type  of  human  charac- 
ter, in  setting  forth  as  the  highest  ideal  Him  whose 
unselfish  devotion,  whose  purity,  love,  faith,  steadfast 
adherence  to  truth  and  good  in  the  face  of  cruel  wrong 
and  suffering,  have  filled  the  earth  with  a  glory  above 
all  Greek,  above  all  Koman  fame." 

A  religion  such  as  this  is  in  its  deepest  root  divine 
— a  religion  which  may,  nay,  which  must  change 
its  form  with  the  widening  thoughts  of  men,  but 
which,  in  the  nineteenth  century  as  in  the  first,  is  a 
"  well  of  w^ater  springing  up  into  everlasting  life," 
a  witness  to  the  nature  of  God.  And  the  great 
lesson,  I  take  it,  which  we  of  this  day — so  like  in 
many  of  its  aspects  to  the  day  when  St.  Paul  preached 
in  Athens — the  great  lesson  which  we  may  learn  from 
the  conflict  of  Paganism  and  Christ  is  this:  Super- 
stition is  conquered  not  by  disbelief  but  by  faith.  The 
over-belief  which  clouds  the  heavenly  light  in  Europe, 
and,  in  fact,  in  England  at  this  hour,  will  be  over- 
thrown not  by  the  negation  of  religion  but  by  its  puri- 
fication.    Eeligion  in  some  shape  men  will  have.  If 


PAGANISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY. 


75 


they  cannot  worship  in  the  daylight,  they  will  worship 
in  the  darkness;  if  they  cannot  worship  a  God  that  is 
known,  they  will  worship  a  god  that  is  unknown,  or, 
still  worse,  mz^sknown.  Epicurus  and  the  Epicureans 
attempted  to  cast  out  the  demon  of  superstition  by 
banishing  all  faith  in  the  Divine  from  the  souls  of  men. 
But  superstition  came  back  again  with  seven  other 
demons  worse  than  itself — with  astrology  and  magic, 
with  terrors  of  evil  genii,  and  of  apparitions  from  the 
dead,  to  fill  the  house  that  was  "  empty,  swept,  and 
garnished."  Religion,"  says  Burke,  and  not  atheism, 
is  the  true  remedy  for  superstition."  Not  by  treating 
as  delusion  all  aspiration  after  the  Divine;  not  by 
meeting  the  fanaticism  of  theology  with  a  counter- 
fanaticism  of  science;  not  by  attempting  to  cast  out 
Satan  by  Satan,  may  we  hope  to  deliver  religious 
minds  from  superstition;  but  by  adding  to  faith 
knowledge,^'  and  by  breathing,  not  in  the  oldness  of 
the  letter,  but  in  the  newness  of  the  spirit,''  the  Divine 
inspiration  of  Christ. 


V. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIANITY: 
FIRST  CENTURY  A.D. 


Und  in  der  That,  ist  es  nicht  die  grosse,  die  wesentliche  Leis- 
tung  des  Christ enthums,  dass  es  Leben  gebracht  hat?  Eeligion  gab 
es  auch  vorher,  das  Neue  Testament  giebt,  wie  man  oft  mit  Spott 
oder  Verwunderung  ihm  nachgereehnet  hat,  kaum  Eine  neue 
Lehre;  was  es  Erhabenstes  in  der  Moral  hat,  bieten  ganz  ahnlich 
gleichzeitige  Schriftsteller  der  classischen  Welt:  Cicero,  Seneca,  spa- 
ter  Plutarch.  Aber  dass  dies  keine  blossen  Moralsatze  blieben,  die 
einzelne  Philosophen  aufstellten,  sondern,  dass  sie  wirksame  Antriebe 
wurden,  dass  aus  den  Buchstaben  des  Pergamentes  Leben  quoll :  das 
ist  das  Werk  des  Christenthums." — Max  Wolff  {Das  Evangelium 
Johannes  in  seiner  JBedeutung  fur  Wissenschaft  und  Glauben,  s.  52). 

"0!  /xerd  7^6yov  jSiuaavreg,  'Kpiariavoi  elat^  Kav  aOeoi  evoju'iaOr/aav ^ 
olov  kv  "'ETCaijgl  fiEv  '^uKpciTrjQ  Kal  "RpaKleLTog  Kal  ol  b/uotot  avToic." — 
Justin  Martyr  {Apol.  i.  46). 

"  Le  monde,  revenu  de  la  superstition  paienne,  a  mis  sa  foi  dans 
I'humaine  sagesse  et  dans  ceux  qui  la  professent  dignement." — Con- 
stant Martha  {Les  Moralistes  sous  V  Empire  Bomain,  p.  7). 


V. 


Certain  philosophers  of  the  Epicureans,  and  of  the  Stoics, 
encountered  him.  .  .  .  Then  Paul  stood  in  the  midst  of 
Mars  Hill  and  said,  Ye  men  of  Athens,  ...  as  I  passed  by, 
and  beheld  your  devotions,  I  found  an  altar  with  this 
inscription,  '  To  the  Unknown  God.'  Whom  therefore  ye 
ignorantly  worship,  Him  declare  I  unto  you." — Acts  xvii, 
18,  22,  23. 

It  is  a  fact  of  which  it  would  be  difficult  to  over- 
estimate the  significance  in  the  history  of  religious 
development,  that  in  the  first  century  of  our  era  a 
change  came  over  the  spirit  of  philosophy,  transmuting 
it  into  a  religious  faith  and  inspiring  it  with  a  mystical 
enthusiasm.  When  we  turn  from  the  writings  of 
Cicero  to  those  of  Seneca,  the  contemporary  of  St.  Paul, 
we  cannot  help  being  struck  with  the  fact  that  the 
Platonic  and  Stoical  schools  of  philosophy  for  the  most 
part  represent  a  movement  of  the  human  mind  in  the 
direction  of  spiritual  religion.  Philosophy  has  ceased 
to  be  exclusively  speculative  and  intellectual — it  has 
become  devout,  seeking  and  feeling  after  God,  who  is 
not  far  from  every  one  of  us.  We  may  say  of  philo- 
sophy, during  the  period  when  Christianity  was  silently 

79 


80 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


making  its  way,  what  the  late  Frederick  Denison 
Maurice  has  said  of  Socrates :  ^'  Instead  of  trying  to 
account  for  the  existence  of  the  universe,  he  was  for 
ever  craving  for  a  hght  to  show  him  his  own  path 
through  it."  It  was  not  that  the  speculative  element 
had  altogether  disappeared,  but  it  was  that  the 
questions  which  touch  our  own  personal  being,  the 
attitude  of  the  soul  towards  the  mystery  around  us, 
our  bearing  and  conduct  amidst  the  sins  and  sorrows 
of  life — in  a  word,  those  things  which  concern  us  as 
human  creatures — are  uppermost  in  the  thoughts  of 
men  like  Seneca,  and,  somewhat  later,  of  men  like 
Epictetus  and  Marcus  Aurelius. ' 

In  placing  before  you  under  this  point  of  view  the 
philosophy  of  the  first  century  in  its  relation  to 
Christianity,  I  must  take  you  from  Athens  to  Eome. 
Learning  apart  from  life  has  a  tendency  to  degenerate 
into  dilettantism  or  mere  rhetoric.  "  The  schools  of 
Athens  "  in  her  decline  ^'  were  fruitful  in  pedants,  but 
failed  to  produce  true  men."  ^  Of  many  of  her  later 
productions  has  to  be  said  what  Bentley  said  of  the 
Letters  of  Phalaris :  '^You  feel  by  the  emptiness  and 
deadness  of  them  that  you  converse  with  some  dream- 
ing pedant  with  his  elbow  on  his  desk."  But  in 
Rome,  where  the  rush  and  stir  of  life  were  for  ever 


1  Finlay,  "History  of  Greece  under  the  Romans,"  p.  209. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  81 


sounding  like  the  waves  of  the  sea  in  the  thinker's 
ears — in  the  city  which  St.  Paul  and  Juvenal  have 
described  in  such  scathing  words  and  angry  lines, 
where  sin  and  vice  and  folly  trod  upon  each  other's 
heels,  where  tragedy  and  farce  alternated  in  men's 
lives,  and  there  was  but  ''one  step  from  the  sublime  to 
the  ridiculous" — where  luxury  and  poverty  stood  out 
side  by  side  in  colossal  magnitude,  where  servility,  base- 
ness, cruelty,  and  treachery  prospered,  and  noble  spi- 
rits escaped  from  the  reach  of  the  despot's  arm  only  by 
death — in  Eome,  the  philosopher  looked  out  from  his 
studious  retreat  upon  a  spectacle  which  saddened  his 
heart,  which  made  him  ''hang  his  head,  and  blush  to 
think  himself  a  man" — which  moved  him  to  hatred  of 
vice,  to  sympathy  with  sorrow,  to  pity  for  degrada- 
tion— which  fired  with  a  passion  of  human  emotion  the 
whole  circle  of  his  thought. 

And  thus  it  was  in  Eome — much  more  than  in 
Athens — that  philosophy  assumed  the  functions  of 
religion.  At  the  same  time  it  would  be  unjust  to  for- 
get that  it  was  from  Athens  that  came  the  original 
impulse  which  transformed  philosophy  into  devotion. 
That  impulse  proceeded  from  Socrates,  whom  the 
Christian  historian  Neander  has  rightly  called  "the 
greatest  man  of  the  ancient  world."  He  it  was  who 
initiated  the  spiritual  and  moral  movement  which 
transferred  inquiry  from  the  world  without  to  the 


82 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


world  within,  from  outward  nature  to  the  mind  of 
man — a  movement  which,  passing  through  Plato,  and 
Zeno,  and  a  host  of  lesser  though  still  bright  names, 
onwards  into  Italy,  became  under  the  practical  genius 
of  Rome  a  religious  element,  a  moral  teaching  power 
in  the  queen  city  of  the  nations. 

In  his  sermon  on  the  Areopagus,  St.  Paul,  it  has 
been  said,  'imbued  philosophy  with  a  profound  senti- 
ment of  religion."^  No  doubt  this  is  true,  but  it  is 
also  true  that  much  of  the  philosophy  of  the  age  was 
already  imbued  with  the  sentiment  of  religion,  and 
among  St.  Paul's  stoical  hearers  may  well  have  been 
some  who,  while  rejecting  his  special  message,  felt 
themselves  in  harmony  with  the  general  spirit  of  his 
speech.  However  widely  the  creed  of  the  apostle 
differed  from  the  doctrines  of  the  Academe  and  the 
Porch,  there  were  some  things  in  which  they  were  in 
real  agreement.  A  large  section  of  philosophers 
preached,  as  St.  Paul  did,  the  right  of  the  higher 
nature  to  predominate  over  the  lower,  the  superiority 
of  soul  to  sense^  of  mind  to  matter ;  and  the  very  terms 
in  which  Christian  theology,  borrowing  from  St.  Paul, 
sets  forth  the  antagonism  between  the  better  and  the 
worse  impulses  of  our  nature — the  terms,  so  familiar 
to  the  readers  of  the  New  Testament,  "  the  spirit  and 


1  Milman. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIANITY. 


83 


the  flesh  " — were  employed  in  the  schools.  Philosophy, 
too,  preached  detachment  from  earth  and  contempla- 
tion of  eternal  things.  It  preached  the  love  of  good- 
ness for  its  own  sake,  apart  from  all  fear  of  punishment 
or  hope  of  reward,  and  held  that  by  virtue  we  became 
partakers  of  a  Divine  nature. 

Now,  such  devout  and  earnest  minds  as  these  were 
seekers  after  God.  They  believed  in  a  Universal  Mind, 
in  a  Spirit  of  the  Universe,  and  listened  approvingly  as 
St.  Paul  described  the  Godhead  as  "  dwelling  not  in 
temples  made  with  hands,"  as  "  Lord  of  heaven  and 
earth,"  as  Him  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being;  ^'  and  it  was  of  such  men  as  these  that  Justin 
Martyr,  the  Christian  Apologist,  said,  These  men  are 
Christians,  not  atheists."  It  must  be  remembered  that, 
however  cold  and  abstract  was  their  speculative  doc- 
trine about  God,  their  hearts  were  often  better  than 
their  heads.  Just  as  the  Christian  theologian  in 
Alexandria  or  Ephesus  (or,  for  that  matter,  in  Munich 
or  in  Oxford),  discussing  metaphysical  questions  about 
the  Trinity,  is  in  a  different  attitude  of  mind  from  the 
same  man  worshipping  in  hours  of  weakness  or  sorrow 
the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  so, 
too,  Platonist  and  Stoic  often  came  down  from  those 
frozen  summits  of  speculation  about  Godhead  to 
cherish,  in  devouter  moods,  the  idea  of  sympathy 
between  the  spirit  of  God  and  meo,  to  feel  some- 


84 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


thing  of  a  personal  relation  towards  a  higher 
Being. 

Permit  me  to  touch  briefly  for  a  few  moments  on 
these  spiritual,  ethical,  and  practical  aspects  of  the 
Gentile  philosophy  in  St.  Paul's  age. 

Of  conscious  life  after  death  the  philosophy  of  this 
time  says  little.  It  was  rarely  affirmed  and  rarely 
denied.  It  was  admitted  as  a  great  and  noble  pos- 
sibility— an  aspiration — a  hope — almost  a  faith.  Nor 
should  I  think  that  it  was  the  Stoics  who  mocked 
when  St.  Paul  spoke  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead. 
There  were  men  in  this  age  who  did  not  despise 
prayer  and  meditation  as  communion  with  God,  who 
held  a  belief  in  some  kind  of  providential  government 
of  the  worlds  and  who  were  fully  possessed  with  the 
idea  of  a  city  of  God,  of  a  brotherhood  of  mankind,  in 
which  even  the  slave  had  a  part.  The  expression  of  a 
bright  hope  for  the  future  of  the  human  race,  which 
is  nowhere  found  in  Cicero,  is  found  in  Seneca,  and 
"  Seneca  has  written  a  fine  book  on  Providence,  for 
which  there  was  not  even  a  name  at  Eome  in  the  time 
of  Cicero."  ^ 

Nor  let  us  suppose  that  all  this  higher  and  better 
feeling  in  the  hearts  of  Pagan  saints  and  sages  was 
wholly  devoid  of  some  measure  of  the  spirit  of  Him 


1  Quoted  from  De  Maestre  by  Merivale,  "History  of  the  Romans  under 
the  Empire,"  vi.  458  n.,  cabinet  ed. 


PHILOSOPHY  AXB  CHRISTIAXITY. 


85 


who  "  was  moved  with  compassion  on  the  multitudes 
because  they  fainted  and  were  scattered  abroad  as 
sheep  having  no  shepherd."  A  lesser  portion  of  that 
spirit  had  fallen  on  philosophy.  So  long  as  philosophy 
was  purely  intellectual,  it  felt  no  mission  to  enlighten 
the  common  man.  Philosophy  is  satisfied/'  said 
Cicero,  "with  a  select  few  as  its  judges.  It  designedly 
shuns  the  multitude,  which,  in  fact,  suspects  and  hates 
it."  Of  this  passage  a  modern  writer^  has  remarked, 
that  "it  sounds  like  God's  judgment  on  earth  against 
philosophy."  Yet  surely  it  stands  to  reason  that,  so 
long  as  themes  of  a  purely  abstract  kind,  remote  from 
the  immediate  wants  of  men,  were  being  discussed, 
they  could  be  discussed  profitably  only  among  those 
who  were  sufficiently  educated  to  understand  them. 
But  it  was  not  so  with  Socrates,  who  had  preached 
with  the  fervour  of  an  apostle  in  the  streets  of  Athens 
deliverance  from  the  "  conceit  of  knowledge  without 
the  reality,"  and  from  the  bondage  of  vice.  And  it 
was  not  so  at  this  time  in  Rome  with  the  philosophy 
which  owed  its  first  religious  impulse  to  Socrates.  As 
soon  as  philosophy  became  devout,  it  sought  to  reach 
the  hearts  and  consciences  of  men.  The  school  and 
lecture-room  fulfilled  the  function,  and  were,  in  fact, 
the  prototype  of  the  later  Christian   pulpit.  The 


1  Eliot,  "Libertj-  of  Rome,"  ii.  429 ;  Cicero,  Tusc.  Qutest.  ii.  1. 


86 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


doors,  like  the  doors  of  our  churches,  were  for  the 
most  part  open  to  all  who  chose  to  enter ;  and  many  a 
slave,  like  Epictetus,  many  an  artisan  or  petty  trades- 
man, must  have  heard  within  the  walls  discourses 
addressed,  like  the  Christian  sermon,  to  the  spiritual 
part  of  man,  and  resulting  in  the  conversion  from  evil 
to  good. 

Noble  lives  were  lived  as  the  fruit  of  this  new 
teaching  and  preaching  power.  Martyrs  died  for 
philosophy,  or  rather  for  the  virtue  which  it  inspired. 
Under  its  influence  a  humanising  spirit  breathed  itself 
into  the  foremost  minds,  and,  towards  the  close  of  the 
century,  made  itself  felt  in  the  palace  of  the  Cse- 
sars.  Seneca,  who,  like  St.  Paul,  does  not  condemn 
slavery,  yet,  like  St.  Paul,  pleads  for  the  slave. 
Juvenal  lashes  with  the  keenest  sting  of  his  satire 
the  heartless  Koman  lady  for  maltreatment  of  her 
slaves,  condemning  cruelty  towards  those  who  are  of 
the  same  flesh  and  blood,  of  the  same  mind  and  soul 
as  ourselves.  The  gladiatorial  games,  the  shambles 
where  men  were  butchered  to  make  a  Koman  holi- 
day," of  which  a  century  before  the  human  Cicero 
speaks  in  only  the  faintest  tone  of  deprecation,  which 
a  century  later  the  letter  from  Vienne  and  Lyons 
finely  calls  "  the  public  spectacle  of  the  inhumanity  of 
the  Gentiles,"  are  already  vehemently  condemned  by 
Seneca ;  and  it  was  a  philosopher  who,  when  a  pro- 


PHILOSOPHY  AXD  CHEISTIANITY. 


87 


posal  was  made  to  introduce  the  Eoman  ampliitlieatre 
into  Athens,  said,  "  First,  then,  Athenians,  you  must 
cast  down  the  altar  erected  to  Mercy."  And  it  was 
under  the  same  influence  that,  in  the  early  part  of  the 
second  century,  Hadrian  and  the  Antonines  established 
orphan  asylums,  and  strove  in  various  ways  to  mitigate 
the  cruel  practices  which  had  come  down  to  them  from 
antiquity.  ^ 

Such  was  the  religious  tone  and  bent  of  much  that 
was  called  philosophy  in  the  first  century  and  in  part 
of  the  second  century  after  Christ.  The  lovers  of 
wisdom  w^ere  seekers  after  God.  And,  my  brethren, 
we  shall  miss,  I  believe,  the  real  lesson  of  these  facts 
if  we  assume,  as  too  often  is  assumed  in  a  polemical 
interest,  that  such  philosophy  was  in  this  earlier  stage 
a  plagiarism  either  of  Judaism  or  of  Christianity. 
There  are  no  facts  to  justify  this  assumption.  It  is 
true  that  Judaism  did  leaven  to  some  considerable 
extent  the  artisan  and  slave  population  in  Eome  at 
this  period.  Many  Jewish  customs,  too,  particularly 
the  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  were  familiarly  known 
in  the  large  cities.  But  evidence  wholly  fails  that  the 
spiritual  elements  of  the  Hebrew  religion  had  affected 
the  educated  classes,  who,  in  their  ignorance  of  what 


1  See  Capes,  "The  Age  of  the  Antonines,"  p.  18,  and  cf.  p.  74;  Merivale, 
"  History  of  the  Romans  under  the  Empire,"  viii.  55,  56, 193,  cabinet  ed. 


88 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


that  religion  really  was,  held  the  Jewish  race  in 
supreme  contempt.  We  have  but  to  read  the  account 
which  Tacitus  gives  of  the  origin  and  character  of  the 
Hebrew  nation  and  its  religion  to  see  how  utterly  these 
were  misconceived.  And  as  for  Christianity,  it  had 
not  as  yet  had  time  to  make  its  message  heard  among 
the  educated.  No  doubt,  at  a  much  later  period, 
when  Christianity  had  already  become  a  potent  influ- 
ence in  the  Greek  and  Latin  world,  the  new  Platonism 
was  largely  a  plagiarism  of  the  rising  faith,  just  as  the 
new  Paganism  of  Julian  was  an  imitation  of  the 
Church.  But  it  was  not  so  in  the  year  51,  nor  for  a 
long  time  afterwards.  No;  '^God  fulfils  Himself  in 
many  ways."  What  we  see  here  is  the  Spirit  of  God 
blowing  where  He  listeth — human  speculation  touched 
by  the  breath  of  a  Divine  inspiration.  Christianity 
was  in  the  air,  waiting  only  the  moment  when  the 
gathered  streaks  of  vapour,  radiant  with  the  glory  of 
the  sun,  should  break  and  come  down  in  rain  from 
heaven.  The  Divine  reason,  whose  highest  revelation 
was  in  the  word  and  life  of  the  Beloved  Son,  was  also 
in  the  deep  night  of  Paganism  a  light  shining  in  the 
darkness,  and  a  light  which  was  the  life  of  men. 

Yes!  philosophy  and  Christianity  too  often  mis- 
understood each  other,  were  too  often  arrayed  against 
each  other.  It  is  but  too  sadly  true  that  in  later  times 
men  who  called  themselves  philosophers  lent  them- 


PHILOSOPHY  ASD  CHRISTIAXTTY.  89 


selves  to  the  maltreatment  of  Christians.  Nay,  the 
great,  wise,  and  noble  emperor,  Marcus  Aurelius,  per- 
secuted the  Church  which  he  failed  to  understand  ;  a 
fact  which,  as  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill  implies,  '4s  one  of 
the  most  tragical  facts  in  all  history."  And  the  Church, 
when  it  gained  the  power,  retaliated  to  its  own  real 
detriment  by  proscribing  for  ages  all  liberty  of  thought. 
JSTot  the  less  true  is  it  that  philosophy  and  Christianity 
were  in  fact  allies,  fighting  against  the  same  foes — 
superstition,  ignorance,  shamelessness,  profligacy,  and 
sin.  Not  the  less  true  is  it  that  philosophy,  like  John 
the  Baptist,  was  the  forerunner  of  the  Christ,  pre- 
paring the  way  of  the  Lord,  and  making  His  paths 
straight. 

The  very  language  which  Christianity  employed 
in  addressing  itself  to  the  world  ,  was  the  creation 
of  philosophy.  The  narrow  vocabulary,  the  unyield- 
ing construction  of  the  Aramaic  or  Hebrew  of  that 
day  would  never  have  lent  themselves  to  the  subtle 
argumentation  of  St.  Paul  or  the  meditative  soli- 
loquies of  St.  John.  The  old  wine-skin  would  have 
been  rent,  and  the  word  of  life  spilt  like  the  new 
wine.  It  was  Socrates  who  gave  to  the  tongue  of 
Greece  those  sharp  ethical  distinctions  which  made  it 
capable  of  expressing  every  shade  of  moral  and  spiritual 
meaning.  It  was  Plato  who  shaped  common  words  to 
become  the  vehicle  of  ideas  which  trembled  heaven- 


90 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


ward  like  a  flame  of  fire.  It  was  Philo  who,  in 
Alexandria,  blended  the  thought  of  Plato  and  the 
faiths  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  and  so  prepared  the 
very  cast  of  expression  in  which  the  preachers  of  the 
Gospel  spake  to  G-reeks,  in  which  the  New  Testament 
was  written.  The  very  language  of  the  later  creeds 
was  furnished  by  the  Greek  philosophical  schools. 
Humanly  speaking,  had  Socrates  never  cross-questioned 
in  the  market-place  of  Athens,  St.  Paul  could  never 
have  disputed  there  with  all  who  met  with  him.  Had 
Plato  never  taught,  the  fourth  Gospel  could  never  have 
been  written.  And  those  spiritual  thoughts,  those 
noble  aspirations  so  closely  bordering  upon  Christianity, 
sometimes  even  identical  with  much  of  its  teaching, 
which  we  trace  in  the  philosophy  of  the  first  century 
— a  resemblance  which  gave  rise  to  the  fiction  that 
Seneca  was  a  friend  and  pupil  of  St.  Paul — these  were 
scattered  everywhere  as  germs  of  religious  life,  which 
awaited  only  the  quickening  light  and  warmth  of  the 
Sun  of  righteousness  to  develop  into  a  higher  faith. 
The  devout  and  spiritual  philosophy  of  that  age  broke 
up  the  hard  glebe  of  the  soil  in  which  the  tree  of  life 
was  rooted.  When  the  fulness  of  time  was  come,  God 
sent  forth  His  Son  into  a  world  which  prophet  and 
philosopher  alike  had  prepared  for  His  coming. 

And  yet  it  will  be  said,  and  said  justly,  Christianity 
accomplished   the  work    wherein  philosophy  failed. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  Ql 


Undoubtedly  it  did  so.  For  Christianity  was  strong 
in  two  grand  motive  powers  in  which  philosophy,  reli- 
gious as  it  was,  was  weak.  Christianity  gathered  the 
highest  spiritual  ideas  of  the  age  around  faith  in  the 
One  living  God,  and  around  a  new  and  higher  type  of 
manhood.  God  and  Christ — the  One  Eternal  Foun- 
tain of  all  life  in  the  universe,  and  the  highest,  holiest 
manhood — these  were  the  two  master-influences  which 
realised  a  kingdom  of  God  on  earth. 

My  brethren,  it  was  the  misfortune  of  philosophy 
that  there  was  nothing  in  the  popular  creed,  nothing 
in  the  popular  worship,  to  which  it  could  attach  itself 
in  order  to  leaven  the  mass  of  men  with  a  purer  faith. 
The  mythology  which  had  its  roots  in  the  prehistoric 
past,  and  which  survived  amidst  the  higher  culture  as 
a  lower  form  of  religion,  was  not  susceptible  of  develop- 
ing into  a  loftier  belief,  into  a  holier  aspiration.  The 
multiplicity  of  gods,  the  contradictory,  impure,  trivial, 
sometimes  malignant  legends  which  gathered  around 
each  local  shrine,  were  positive  obstacles  to  every 
attempt  to  charge  polytheism  with  a  spiritual  signifi- 
cance. The  better  minds  had  risen  to  a  conception  of 
the  Divine  unity,  but  it  remained  a  philosophic  faith 
of  the  few  which  found  no  point  of  contact  or  of 
assimilating  power  in  the  creeds  and  rites  of  the  many. 
Plato,  who  believed  that  '^God  ought  to  be  represented 
as  He  is,"  felt  that  out  of  the  Homeric  legends  no  life 


92 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


for  the  soul  could  come,  and  banished  the  poems  of 
Homer  in  consequence  from  his  ideal  republic.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  philosophic  minds,  despairing  of 
weaning  the  people  from  the  national  worship  or  of 
penetrating  it  with  a  truer  faith,  should  have  found  it 
necessary  to  divorce  philosophy  almost  wholly  from 
the  beliefs  and  the  ritual  of  polytheism.  Nor  is  it 
surprising  that,  under  conditions  such  as  these,  no  ideal 
of  the  higher  religious  life  should  be  realised  in  flesh 
and  blood.  But  there  was  one  nation  in  which  mono- 
theism after  ages  of  conflict  had  won  the  victory,  and 
expelled  the  poison  of  impure  and  cruel  idolatries  from 
its  blood.  It  was  with  an  assured  and  confident  faith 
that  St.  Paul  proclaimed  in  Athens,  in  Corinth,  and  in 
Rome,  the  One  living  God,  the  One  infinite  Father  of 
all.  And  it  was  with  a  faith  equally  assured  and 
glowing  with  a  concentrated  passion  of  love  that  he 
and  the  Churches  which  he  founded  set  forth  the  new 
and  higher  type  of  manhood  which  had  been  mani- 
fested in  the  life  and  death  of  the  Lord.  All  the  truer 
conceptions,  all  the  nobler  aspirations,  all  the  better 
thoughts  which  were  floating  in  men's  minds,  crys- 
tallised at  the  touch  of  the  new  faith  which  declared 
the  One  God,  and  revealed  in  the  parable  of  the  history 
of  Jesus  what  it  is  to  be  God's  Beloved  Son.  Philo- 
sophy was  religious,  but  it  could  not  be  called  religion, 
at  least  not  for  the  many,  until  its  spiritual  elements. 


PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  93 


SO  widely  dissipated,  were  concentrated  into  one  burn- 
ing focus  around  the  One  God  and  the  one  human 
life  that  was  and  is  the  brightest  image  of  God. 

"  When  old  things  terminate  and  new  commence, 
A  solitary  great  man's  worth  the  world, 
God  takes  the  business  into  His  own  hands 
At  such  time  :  who  creates  the  novel  flower 
Contrives  to  guard  and  give  it  breathing  room." 

So  speaks  a  great  English  poet/  and  so  was  it  then, 
when  the  faith  of  which  Jesus  was  the  centre  drew  up 
into  its  life  and  gathered  into  its  own  being  all  the 
better  influences  of  the  world. 


1  Robert  Browning, 


6 


VI. 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  SCEPTICISM. 


Tt  6s  Kai  CKp*  eavTO)V  ov  KpivsTS  to  SiKaiov."  —  WOEDS  OF  THE 
Lord  {Luke  xii.  57). 

"ILavra  doKi/nd^ers'  to  Ka?.bv  KaTex^Te." — St.  Paul  (1  Ep.  ad  Thes- 
sal.  V.  21). 

"Non  hsec  religio  amplius,  sed  superstitio  est  dicenda.  Qusenam 
religio  ilia  est,  quae  hoc  dieere  prohibeat  quod  verum  est?" — Vit- 
RiNGA  {Observationes  Sacrce,  i.  252). 

"  Inimicos  huic  dispensation! ,  quse  facta  est  per  Jesura  Christum 
et  hunc  crucifixum,  generaliter  accipere  .  .  .  debemus  omnes  qui 
vetant  credere  incognita  et  certam  scientiam  pollicentur  .  .  .  Non 
quod  scientise  pollicitatio  reprehendenda  sit,  sed  qnod  gradum  salu- 
berrimum  et  necessarinra  fidei  negligendum  putant,  per  quern  in 
aliquid  certum,  quod  esse  nisi  seternum  non  potest,  oportet  ascendi. 
Hinc  eos  apparet  nec  ipsam  scientiam  habere,  quam  contempta  fide 
pollicentur,  quia  tam  utilem  ac  necessarium  gradum  ejus  ignorant." 
— S.  AuGUSTiNUS  {Enarrat.  in  Psalm,  viii.,  Oper.  tom.  viii.,  p.  34, 
Basilese,  Frob.  1529). — [I  strike  out  "debere"  as  unintelligible  and 
omitted  in  good  editions,  as  the  Benedictines  and  Migne's.] 

"The  faculty  of  reason  is  the  candle  of  the  Lord  within  us." — 
Bishop  Butler  {Analogy,  Part  ii.). 


VI. 


Then  certain  philosophers  of  the  Epicureans,  and  of  the  Stoics, 
encountered  him.  .  .  .  And  when  they  heard  of  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead,  some  mocked." — Acts  xiii.  18,  32. 

In  taking  for  my  subject  Ancient  and  Modern  Scep- 
ticism," the  first  question  which  we  naturally  ask  is, 
What  do  we  mean  by  scepticism  ? 

Now  this  word  scepticism,  although  it  has  acquired 
an  unfavourable  sense,  is  a  very  innocent  word,  and 
the  thing  signified  is,  in  its  own  place,  the  right  and 
the  duty  of  every  human  being.  The  primary  mean- 
ing of  scepticism  is  simply  that  of  inquiry  or  inves- 
tigation. The  secondary  meaning,  closely  connected 
with  the  former  and  springing  out  of  it,  is  that  of 
doubt.  Doubt  is  the  necessary  concomitant  of  inquiry. 
We  inquire  only  when  we  doubt  and  because  we  doubt. 
The  stimulus  to  investigation,  the  essential  condition 
of  all  inquiry,  is  the  questioning  whether  the  thing  is 
this  or  that,  whether  this  road  or  that  conducts  to  the 
temple  of  truth.  There  can  be  no  acquisition  of  know- 
ledge, and  there  can  be  no  real,  solid  conviction  of  an 

intellectual  order  in  matters  of  religion,  except  through 

97 


98 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


inquiry  and  doubt.  Without  inquiry  there  can  be  no 
progress,  and  there  can  be  no  inquiry  unless  there  be 
doubt.  If  the  thinkers  of  Greece  had  not  initiated  a 
wise  and  rational  scepticism,  we  might  at  this  moment 
be  believing  that  this  planet  is  the  fixed  centre  of  the 
universe,  and  still  be  worshipping  Woden  or  Thor. 

In  this,  then,  its  proper  meaning  of  inquiry,  scep- 
ticism is  associated  with  the  noblest  activity  of  the 
human  intellect  in  its  search  after  truth.  And  there  is  no 
region — none  at  least  that  is  accessible  to  human  thought 
— that  is  to  be  railed  off  as  holy  ground  forbidding  the 
approach  of  inquiry.    There  is  no  class  of  subjects  what- 
ever that  can  be  legitimately  shut  out  from  its  scrutiny. 
And  yet,  even  in  the  region  of  the  physical  sciences, 
the  right  of  investigation  is  admitted  in  some  quarters 
only  grudgingly  and  with  reservation,  while  in  theology 
men  are  ever  striving  to  draw  a  line,  and  to  say  to  in- 
quiry, ''Thus  far  shalt  thou  come,  and  no  farther." 
Now  the  line  can  be  drawn,  and  even  then  must  be 
drawn  by  the  inquirer  himself,  only  where  the  human 
faculties  have  come  to  the  end  of  their  tether,  which 
they  have  not  done  by  a  long  way  yet;  and  the  sooner 
we  admit  this  right  of  rational  scepticism  ungrudgingly 
and  frankly,  the  better  will  it  be  for  ourselves,  the 
better  will  it  be  for  the  cause  of  a  real  and  living 
faith  in  God. 

If  faith  is  to  be  something  more  than  the  ship- 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  SCEPTICIS3L  99 


wreck  of  the  reason  or  a  cry  of  despair,  it  raust  be 
compatible  with  the  fullest  and  freest  inquiry.  No 
greater  disservice  can  be  done  to  spiritual  religion  and 
to  pure  theology  in  this  age  than  to  set  up  the  au- 
thority of  an  infallible  church  or  the  dead  letter  of  an 
infallible  book  in  opposition  to  the  advancement  of 
learning  and  to  the  progress  of  science — to  make 
unverified  traditional  opinions  a  barrier  to  historical 
criticism  and  to  the  investigation  of  nature.  One 
thing  at  least  is  certain :  Christianity  in  its  origin — 
before  church  councils  tampered  with  it — before  even 
one  line  of  the  New  Testament  was  written — was  in 
principle  the  recognition  of  the  right  and  duty  of  the 
individual  soul  to  decide  for  itself  in  matters  pertain- 
ing to  God.  I  do  not  say  that  this  idea  was  distinctly 
formulated,  but  I  do  say  that  it  was  latent  in  that 
appeal  to  the  human  heart  and  conscience  which 
primitive  Christianity  was.  "  Prove  all  things  :  hold 
fast  that  which  is  good."  So  spake  St.  Paul,  and 
preaching  in  the  Areopagus  to  philosophers  of  various 
schools,  to  disciples,  perhaps,  of  Aristotle  or  of  Plato, 
as  well  as  to  disciples  of  Epicurus  and  of  Zeno — the 
Apostle  so  far  stood  on  the  same  ground  with  these 
that  he  recognised  and  courted  full  and  free  inquiry 
when  he  appealed  to  rational  conviction  on  behalf  of  the 
faith  which  he  proclaimed.  And  just  as  the  spirit 
which  animates  the  modern  scientific  inquirer  is  the 


100 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


noble  bequest  of  ancient  Hellenic  speculation,  so  the 
efforts  of  the  liberal  theologian  in  the  Churches  of  the 
Eeformation,  in  England,  France,  and  Germany,  to 
emancipate  spiritual  religion  from  its  overgrowth  of 
superstition,  is  in  harmony  with  the  essential  principle 
of  Christianity  itself. 

So  far  then,  my  brethren,  as  scepticism,  whether  an- 
cient or  modern,  is  simply  inquiry,  the  doubt  from 
which  issues  the  search  after  truth,  not  only  is  it  not 
what  it  has  been  rhetorically  called,  a  loaded  shell 
flung  into  the  fortress  of  the  soul  by  its  great  enemy," 
but  it  is  in  the  sphere  of  intellectual  research  an  in- 
dispensable element  of  progress,  and  often  enough  in 
the  spiritual  life  of  the  soul  an  agony  which  is  close 
akin  to  faith.  There  is,  however,  something  else;  and 
you  will  not  suspect  me  of  taking  back  with  the  left 
hand  what  I  have  given  with  the  right  when  I  say, 
that  doubt  is  a  means,  not  an  end,  having  no  value  for 
itself  alone,  and,  whether  in  the  realm  of  science  or 
of  religion,  of  service  only,  as  the  road  which  may 
lead  to  certainty.  And  it  is  owing  to  the  fact  that 
scepticism  does  often  really  imply  something  more 
than  this  that  those  who  themselves  shrink  from  in- 
quiry have  found  some  justification,  both  in  ancient 
and  in  modern  times,  in  giving  scepticism  a  bad  name. 
The  doubt  that  is  essential  to  investigation  may  pass 
from  a  mere  negative  and  provisional  attitude  of 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  SCEPTICISM.  IQl 


expectancy  into  a  positive  and  permanent  state  of 
mind — may  be  changed  from  a  means  into  an  end, 
and  become  a  mental  habit  quite  as  unfavourable  to 
the  discovery  of  truth  as  the  most  pronounced  dogma- 
tism. In  this  sense  scepticism  is  a  misfortune  and 
may  become  a  moral  malady. 

As  examples  of  these  two  widely  different  things 
called  by  the  same  name,  we  may  place  side  by  side 
in  the  world  of  Greek  speculation  Socrates  and  Pyrrho 
of  Elis.  With  Socrates,  doubt  was  a  means,  not  an 
end ;  with  Pyrrho — from  whom  the  word  pyrrhonism 
as  another  name  for  universal  scepticism  came  into 
vogue — doubt  was  in  itself  an  end.  Socrates  made 
doubt  the  path  to  truth,  Pyrrho  made  it  the  negation 
of  all  truth.  Socrates  sought  that  he  might  find, 
knocked  at  the  door  of  truth  that  it  might  be  opened 
to  him :  Pyrrho  relinquished  seeking,  believed  in  no 
possibility  of  finding,  and  made  doubt  the  resting-place 
and  pillow  of  the  soul.  Let  us  hear  the  noble  words 
that  Plato  ^  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Socrates.  "  Some 
things  I  have  said  of  which  I  am  not  altogether  con- 
fident. But  that  we  shall  be  better  and  braver  and 
less  helpless  if  we  think  that  we  ought  to  inquire,  than 
we  should  have  been  if  we  indulged  in  the  idle  fancy 
that  there  was  no  knowing  and  no  use  in  searching 


}  Meno.  Jowett,  i.  276. 
6* 


102 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


after  what  we  know  not — that  is  a  theme  upon  which 

I  am  ready  to  fight,  in  word  and  deed,  to  the  utmost 

of  my  power."     From  such  a  sentiment  as  this 

Pyrrho  would  have  expressed  his  decided  dissent. 

The  hne  in  which  Byron  has  summed  up  the  Socratic 

philosophy — 

"Well  didst  thou  speak,  Athena's  wisest  son, 
*  All  that  we  know  is  nothing  can  be  known,'  " — 

quite  misrepresents  Socrates,  but  fits  Pyrrho  to  the 
life.    He  did  believe  that  "  nothing  could  be  known." 

We  know  nothing,"  he  said,  not  even  that  we  do 
not  know  anything,"  and  held  that  what  are  called 
first  principles  are  self -contradictory  and  capable 
of  establishing  nothing.  A  state  of  doubt,"  said 
Diderot,  ''is  a  state  of  misery."  A  state  of  doubt, 
believed  Pyrrho,  a  perfect  suspense  of  judgment,  is  a 
state  of  happiness.  To  quench  all  belief  is  to  quench 
all  desire,  and  thus  to  reach  the  blest  repose  of  apathy. 
Wide  indeed  is  the  difi'erence  between  the  doubt  of 
Socrates  and  the  doubt  of  Pyrrho;  and  very  wide, 
very  strange  and  significant,  too,  was  the  difi'erence 
between  the  personal  fate  and  the  moral  influence  of 
the  two  men.  Socrates  lived  the  life  of  an  apostle, 
and  was  put  to  death  as  a  heretic  and  a  misleader  of 
youth.  Pyrrho  lived  and  died  in  peace  and  esteem. 
But  while  Socrates  initiated  an  intellectual  and  moral 
impulse  which,  across  all  the  centuries,  is  felt  still  in 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  SCEPTICISM.  103 


tlie  world  of  to-day,  and  felt  for  good,  not  for  evil,  the 
influence  of  Pyrrho,  though  a  negatively  virtuous  man 
himself,  took  away  all  motive  to  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge,  all  faith  in  virtue  and  goodness.  Taught 
by  him,  men  held  that  no  God  was  necessary  to  explain 
the  formation  of  the  world — no  evidence  forthcoming 
of  the  existence  of  aught  that  is  Divine.  They  held 
that  nothing  is  just  or  unjust  in  itself,  but  that  the 
distinction  between  good  and  evil  depended  solely 
upon  human  law  and  custom.  And  whatever  may 
have  been  historically  the  speculative  distinctions  be- 
tween the  doctrines  of  Pyrrho  and  those  of  Epicurus/ 
the  moral  fruit  of  his  teaching  is  seen  in  the  later 
Epicureans — such  as  those  who  encountered  St.  Paul, 
who  made  the  pleasure  of  the  passing  day  the  one  sole 
end  of  life,  and  shut  out  all  that  is  Divine  from  the 
world  and  from  the  heart  of  man. 

No  man  who  has  attentively  observed  the  currents 
of  European  thought  in  our  own  day,  will  deny  the 
strong  affinity  between  ancient  and  modern  scepticism. 
The  keen  and  restless  inquiry  after  truth,  which  is  the 
glory  of  the  present  age,  yet  leaves  in  many  hearts 
and  minds  a  fatal  residuum  of  habitual  doubt,  stiffen- 
ing into  the  creed  that  the  truth  which  the  spiritual 

1  In  speculative  principles  the  two  men  differed  widely.  Epicurus  was 
a  dogmatist,  and  regarded  Pyrrho  as  uninstructed  and  undisciplined 
(Diog.  Laert.,  x.  4.  4).  Epicurus  was  fond,  however,  of  picking  up 
anecdotes  about  Pyrrho  (Diog.  Laert.,  ix.  11.  6). 


104 


ST.  PA  UL  AT  ATHENS. 


nature  of  man  needs  is  utterly  beyond  his  reacli,  and 
possibly  bas  no  existence. 

I  am  not  speaking  now  of  tbat  unthinking  indiffer- 
ence to  the  problems  of  the  universe  which  is  con- 
tent to  let  them  pass  as  though  they  did  not  exist. 
Neither  am  I  speaking  of  that  scientific  dogmatism 
which  says  curtly, ''There  is  no  God."  The  attitude 
of  mind  to  which  I  refer  is  one  which  questions  the 
existence  of  any  rational  postulates  of  religious  belief, 
which  says,  sometimes  defiantly,  more  often  sorrowfully, 
"  I  have  no  means  of  knowing,  and  therefore  I  cannot 
believe."  It  is  an  attitude  which  is  occasionally  assumed 
with  a  mingled  flippancy  and  arrogance  by  superficial 
minds,  who  rather  imitate  the  doubts  of  deeper  thinkers 
than  sound  the  abyss  of  thought  for  themselves.  Such 
persons  resemble  very  closely  the  sceptical  followers  of 
Pyrrho.  But  it  would  be  unfair  to  deny  that  there  are 
many  to  whom  doubt  such  as  this  is  no  luxury,  no  quiet 
resting-place,  but  a  state  of  misery,  the  tossing  on  the 
restless  wave  beneath  the  starless  midnight,  the  negation 
to  which  they  feel  themselves  driven  by  the  conviction 
that  we  cannot  by  searching  find  out  God,  or  find  any 
ground  for  believing  that  He  is.  While  ancient  scep- 
ticism questioned  everything,  denying  the  possibility 
of  any  real  knowledge  in  any  sphere  whatever,  modern 
scepticism,  in  this  particular  form  of  it,  questions  not, 
I  think,  at  least  not  consciously,  the  ultimate  prin- 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  SCEPTICISM. 


105 


ciples  of  reason,  but  the  right  of  faith  to  build  upon 
these  a  structure  of  religious  belief.  We  are  incapable, 
it  says,  of  entertaining  any  reasonable  conviction  what- 
ever about  the  Unknown  and  Unknowable  Source  of  our 
being,  or  of  what  ought  to  be  the  attitude  of  mind  and 
heart  towards  it.  The  only  attitude  which  reason 
justifies  is  that  of  the  entire  absence  of  all  belief,  and 
of  all  affirmation  about  it. 

And  this  purely  intellectual  character  of  much 
modern  doubt  is  at  once  its  strength  and  its  weak- 
ness. It  is  its  strength,  rendering  it  so  hard  to 
dislodge,  because  considerations  which  are  spiritual 
rather  than  purely  intellectual,  fall  upon  it  like 
blunted  arrows ;  and  its  weakness,  because  the  spiritual 
nature  of  man  will,  I  believe,  in  the  ultimate  issue, 
be  too  strong  for  modern  as  it  was  too  strong  for 
ancient  scepticism.  The  individual,  with  his  sorrows 
and  with  his  doubts,  we  may  leave  with  perfect  trust 
in  the  hands  of  the  living  God,  who  comprehends 
those  who  comprehend  not  Him;  but  as  a  phase  of 
human  thought,  I  cannot  think  that  nescience — the 
assertion  that  we  can  know  nothing  about  the  Divine 
— will  be  permanent,  but  it  is,  I  apprehend,  far  more 
probable  that  it  will  divide  into  two  streams,  parting 
to  the  left  and  to  the  right  into  a  more  positive  disbelief, 
or  into  a  higher  spiritual  faith. 

Yes,  my  hope  for  the  religious  future  lies  in  the 


106 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


development,  in  all  their  strength  and  purity,  of  the 
deeper  spiritual  faiths  which  have  their  well-spring  in 
the  heart  of  man — faiths  which  shall  be  directed, 
not  extinguished,  by  knowledge.  The  fundamental 
error  of  modern  scepticism  is,  I  conceive,  this,  that  our 
life,  inner  and  outer,  can  ever  be  adequately  guided  by 
a  purely  intellectual  reading  of  our  own  nature  or  of 
the  universe  which  infolds  us. 

Every  intellectual  process  whatever  bases  itself  at  last 
on  faith,  on  some  ultimate  fact  which  it  is  compelled  to 
assume  as  the  ground  and  starting-point  of  all  reasoning, 
without  which  the  whole  structure  of  reasoned  truth 
fades  like  an  unsubstantial  pageant.  We  are  compelled 
every  day  of  our  lives  to  act  upon  assumptions  which  we 
cannot  verify,  upon  what  is  perhaps  proveable,  but  not 
proved,  on  probability,  which,  as  Bishop  Butler  has 
said,  "  is  the  very  guide  of  life,"  shaping  our  daily 
deeds  and  words  by  evidence  not  strictly  conclusive, 
and  yet,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  finding  our  trust  justi- 
fied by  the  issue.  Eising  above  the  levels  of  ordinary 
hfe,  and  looking  out  towards  that  Infinitude  which 
encompasses  the  visible  universe,  this  mental  fact, 
which  is  the  basis  of  science  and  the  guide  of  life, 
takes  the  form  of  a  religious  faith,  an  apprehension  of 
a  Power  of  which  things  seen  are  the  manifestation, — 
a  sense  of  awe,  of  responsibility,  of  duty,  a  conscious- 
ness of  dependence  and  of  sin.    And  this  sense  of 


ANCIENT  AND  3I0DEBN  SCEPTICISM.  107 


religion,  this  faith  springs  out  of  the  same  root  as 
intelligence  itself,  is  twin-sister  with  it,  and  has  a  claim 
to  be  heard  as  we  are  striving  to  find  the  end  and 
meaning  of  our  being.  Well  and  beautifully  has  it 
been  said:  ''We  cannot  say  that  religion  came  upon 
earth,  as  some  say  America  was  peopled,  by  accident. 
It  is  there  as  the  flowers  are  there  which  grow  on  the 
soil ;  it  is  there  as  the  stars  are  in  the  heavens,  shining 
in  their  perennial  brightness ;  it  is  there  by  the  ordina- 
tion of  that  omnipotent  nature  from  which  all  result. 
It  grows  as  they  grow ;  it  blossoms  in  the  heart  as 
surely  as  those  flowers  upon  the  soil;  it  ripens  in 
the  character  as  surely  as  do  the  fruits  of  harvest 
in  the  fields.  It  belongs  to  nature;  it  belongs  to 
humanity."^ 

My  brethren,  it  is  so;  and  just  as  surely  as  our 
intelligence  interprets  the  order  of  which  we  are  a 
part,  so  surely  does  our  spiritual  nature  bear  witness 
to  the  Godhead  whose  offspring  we  are.  At  bottom, 
both  this  visible  universe  and  its  invisible  Lord  are 
past  understanding.  In  its  ultimate  being,  we  cannot 
understand  the  tiniest  flower  that  grows  ^'in  the 
crannied  wall,"  how  much  less  the  Infinite  Life  from 
which  it  springs  ?  Yet  that  Infinite  Life  belongs  to 
faith,  as   its  manifestations  belong  to  intelligence. 


1  W.  J.  Fox,  "  The  Religious  Ideas,"  p.  19. 


108 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


With  the  keen  and  glittering  sword  of  intellect,  scepti- 
cism would  cut  the  living  child  in  two  and  kill  one- 
half  of  our  nature.  But  man  doth  not  live  by  intellect 
alone  any  more  than  he  lives  by  bread  alone.  The 
reason  of  his  understanding  must  be  supplemented 
by  the  reason  of  his  spirit  and  of  his  conscience.  The 
law  of  duty  written  in  our  hearts,  the  awe  inspired  by 
the  unfathomable  depths  of  mystery  on  which  our 
being  is  afloat,  the  influences  of  reverence,  of  sym- 
pathy, and  of  tenderness  with  which  our  souls  are 
flooded, — these  things  it  is  which  justify  the  conviction 
that  there  is  that  which  corresponds  and  responds  to 
them  in  the  Infinite  Power  ''in  whom  >ye  live,  and 
move,  and  have  our  being."  ''Where  mystery  begins," 
said  a  divine  of  the  last  century,  "religion  ends." 
Eather  say,  "Where  mystery  is — and  mystery  is  every- 
where— there  is  religion."  Into  the  Holy  of  holies, 
treading  with  reverent  feet,  let  the  high  priests  of 
science  by  all  means  enter.  It  is  to  find,  like  the 
Eoman  conqueror  in  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem,  no 
visible  Presence  there,  and  yet  to  feel  that  there  is  a 
Presence,  Eternal  and  Divine,  which  cannot  be  touched, 
or  handled,  or  seen, — which  cannot  be  reached  by  the 
subtlest  processes  of  scientific  analysis,  or  tested  by 
the  most  delicate  experiments,  but  which  makes  itself 
felt  notwithstanding  on  the  intellectual  side  of  our 
nature    as    the   universal   causal   agency,  on  the 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  SCEPTICISM.  109 


spiritual  side  as  the  Fountain  of  all  Beauty  and  of  all 
Good. 

Where  the  great  shadow  of  Etna  falls,  in  the  early- 
morning  hour,  all  western  Sicily  is  dark,  while  east- 
ward every  bay  and  headland  is  glittering  in  the  light 
of  the  rising  sun.  But  as  the  sun  climbs  the  sky, 
the  shadow  lessens,  and  by  and  by  all  Sicily  is 
gladdened  by  his  rays.  So  will  it  yet  be  with  the 
Sun  of  knowledge  rising  on  the  soul  of  man.  It  will 
not  be  for  ever  that  light  shall  shine  in  the  intellect, 
and  the  heart  be  left  in  the  shadow  of  despair.  And 
till  this  higher  reconciliation  of  faith  and  knowledge 
shall  come,  our  place  and  duty  is  bravely  to  trust  even 
where  we  cannot  know ;  and,  though  our  feet  stumble 
on  the  dark  mountains  before  the  morning  is  spread 
upon  them,  move  onwards  with  unfailing  heart,  with 
our  faces  to  the  coming  day. 


VII. 

THE  EPICUREANS  AND  MODERN  LIFE. 


"  Let  us  grant  or  imagine  the  Epicurean  successful  as  he  could 
wish  in  this  enterprise  of  subduing  religion;  yet  except  therewith 
he  can  also  trample  down  reason,  new  mould  human  nature,  subju- 
gate all  natural  appetites  and  passions,  alter  the  state  of  things  here 
and  transform  the  world,  he  will  yet  in  greatest  part  fail  of  his  con- 
ceited advantages :  very  short  he  will  fall  of  triumphing  in  a  quiet 
and  contented  mind.  .  .  .  For  he  cannot  be  as  a  beast,  or  a  mere 
sot,  if  he  would:  Reason,  reflecting  on  present  evils,  and  boding 
others  future,  will  afilict  him :  his  own  unsatiable  desires,  unavoida- 
ble fears,  and  untameable  passions  will  disquiet  him.'' — Barrow 
{Works,  I  23). 

"Epicurus  otii  magister." — Pliny  {Nat.  Hist.,  xix.  4). 

"Epicuri  de  grege  porcum." — Horace  {Epist.  i.  4.  16). 

"Ita  non  ab  Epicuro  impulsi  luxuriantur,  sed  vitiis  dediti,  luxu- 
riam  suam  in  philosophise  sinu  abscondunt :  et  eo  concurrunt,  ubi 
audiunt  laudari  voluptatem.  Nec  sestimatur  voluptas  ilia  Epicuri 
.  .  .  quam  sobria  et  sicca  sit :  sed  ad  nomen  ipsum  advolant,  quse- 
rentes  libidinibus  suis  patrocinium  aliquod  ac  velamentum.  Itaque 
quod  unum  habebant  in  malis  bonum,  perdunt,  peccandi  verecun- 
diam." — Seneca  {De  Vita  Beata,  c  xii.). 


VII. 


"  Certain  philosophers  of  the  Epicureans,  and  of  the  Stoics, 
encountered  him.  And  some  said,  What  will  this  babbler 
say  ?  " — Acts  xvii.  18. 

In  the  year  323  before  the  Christian  era,  the  year  in 
which  Alexander  the  Great  died,  there  came  to  Athens, 
in  the  nineteenth  year  of  his  age,  a  youth,  born  of 
Athenian  parents  in  the  Isle  of  Samos.  The  name  of 
this  young  man  was  Epicurus,  founder  of  the  sect  of 
the  Epicureans,  some  representatives  of  which,  upwards 
of  three  centuries  after  the  death  of  their  master, 
listened  with  undisguised  credulity  and  good-humoured 
mockery  to  the  man  who  preached  in  Athens  a  faith 
which  was  destined  to  absorb  the  best  elements  in  the 
teaching  of  their  rivals  the  Stoics,  and  to  suppress  the 
public  advocacy  of  their  own. 

Now,  in  spite  of  the  personal  character  of  Epicurus 
himself — which,  according  to  all  testimony,  was  that  of 
a  man  whose  own  life  was  severely  simple  and  frugal  ^ 

1  The  tradition  of  this  appears,  for  example,  in  the  lines  of  Juvenal — 

"  >'on  Epicurum 

"  Suscipit  exigui  laetum  plantaribus  horti."— <S'aiir.  xiii.  122, 123. 
"  Quantum,  Epicure,  tibi  parvis  suffecit  in  hortis," — Satir.  xiv,  319. 

113 


114 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


— and,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  expressly  dis- 
countenanced every  form  of  vice,  and  strove  ear- 
nestly to  guard  his  teaching  from  abuse,  it  is  not  alto- 
gether without  reason  that  the  word  Epicurean  has 
become,  in  Christian  as  in  Pagan  times,  a  term  of  re- 
proach. There  is,  of  course,  rank  injustice  in  most 
cases  in  making  the  teacher  responsible  for  every  use 
or  abuse  of  his  teaching  by  his  followers,  and  to  some 
extent  Epicurus  must  be  allowed  the  benefit  of  this 
plea;  for  both  in  theory  and  in  practice  he  was  opposed 
to  animal  indulgence  in  any  form.  At  the  same  time 
there  is  the  fact,  notorious  in  history,  that  his  system 
was  thus  abused,  and,  what  is  more  to  the  purpose,  that 
the  abuse  grew  naturally,  however  little  he  himself  in- 
tended or  foresaw  it,  out  of  his  main  principle.  It  has 
been  observed  that  the  real  tendencies  of  a  doctrine 
are  disclosed  far  more  plainly  in  the  men  who  adopt 
than  in  the  man  who  originates  it.  It  is  impossible 
to  doubt,"  says  Mr.  Lecky,  that  Epicureanism  was 
logically  compatible  with  a  very  high  degree  of  virtue. 
It  is  equally  impossible  to  doubt  that  its  practical 
tendency  was  to  vice."  It  is  sad  to  think  that  a  man 
whose  own  life  was  so  pure,  whose  character  was  so 
mild,  who  spent  his  days  in  teaching  what  he  believed 
to  be  the  secret  of  happiness,  who  bore  in  his  old  age 
with  calmness  and  cheerfulness  the  painful  disease  of 
which  he  died,  whose  immediate  followers  cherished 


THE  EPICUREANS  AND  MODERN  LIFE.  115 


his  memory  with  a  tender  enthusiasm,  should  have 
been  the  parent  of  a  type  of  thought  which  has  fos- 
tered, not  checked,  our  native  tendencies  to  selfish  dis- 
regard of  all  but  our  own  personal  happiness — which, 
in  its  worst  form,  was  made  for  something  like  four 
centuries  the  justification  of  a  life  of  ignoble  ease,  and 
which  was,  in  the  age  of  St.  Paul,  ''defiant  of  all  reli- 
gious principles,  and  a  pander  to  every  form  of  vice."  ^ 

What  then  was  this  doctrine  of  Epicurus  which  bore 
after  his  death  fruit,  like  the  apples  on  the  Dead  Sea 
shore, so  fair  without,  so  full  within  of  bitter  ashes  ? 

Now,  I  do  not  think  that  I  am  misrepresenting  the 
leading  principle  of  the  Epicurean  theory  of  morality 
when  I  say  that  it  made  the  culture  of  personal 
pleasure,  and  the  avoidance  of  personal  pain,  the  direct 
and  immediate  end  of  life.  This  view  was  closely 
connected  with  a  materialistic  theory  of  the  universe, 
and  a  virtual  negation  of  all  theology.  His  system  of 
nature  Epicurus  borrowed  from  earlier  thinkers, — 
Empedocles  and  Democritus, — and  is  one  which  bears 
in  its  outward  seeming  a  striking  resemblance  to  the 
modern  scientific  view  with  which  we  have  been  of 
late  years  familiarised  by  constant  discussion,  namely, 
that  this  manifold  order  of  things,  ourselves  included, 
is  the  result  of  the  combination  and  variations  of  pri- 


1  Dr.  James  Donaldson,  "  Hist,  of  Christian  Literature,"  ii.  28. 


116 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


mordial  atoms.  This  physical  theory — which  I  can 
only  say  in  passing  is,  in  the  opinion  of  many  deep 
thinkers,  themselves  men  of  science,  by  no  means 
incompatible  with  the  belief  in  an  Infinite  Power  in 
the  universe  Divine  and  Eternal — was  with  Epicurus 
virtually  atheistic.  Epicurus  did  not  indeed  reject  or 
deny  the  national  gods  of  Athens,  but  he  politely 
bowed  them  out  of  court.  The  gods  of  Epicurus  were 
as  good  as  none.  They  were  themselves  the  products 
of  the  same  material  atoms  as  men.  They  were 
magnified  Epicureans,  who  neither  created  nor  ordered 
the  world,  who, — 

"  As  they  lie  reclined, — 

As  they  lie  beside  their  nectar,  careless  of  mankind — " 

take  no  part  in  its  government  or  interest  in  its  afiairs. 
The  gods  of  Epicurus  are — 

"  The  gods  who  haunt 

The  lucid  interspace  of  world  and  world. 
Where  never  creeps  a  cloud  or  moves  a  wind, 
Nor  ever  falls  the  least  white-star  of  snow, 
Nor  ever  lowest  roll  of  thunder  moans, 
Nor  sound  of  human  sorrow  mounts  to  mar 
Their  sacred  everlasting  calm." 

Considering  what  Greek  and  Italian  mythology  with 
all  its  outward  grace  and  beauty  really  was,  we 
Christians  at  least  ought  not  to  condemn  Epicurus  for 
banishing  the  gods  from  human  life,  nor  be  surprised 
that  his  far  more  earnest  Roman  disciple  Lucretius 


THE  EPICUREANS  AND  MODERN  LIFE. 


117 


revolted  with  his  whole  soul  against  the  sensualism, 
cruelty,  and  unreason  of  the  national  faith.  But  Epi- 
curus made  no  distinction  between  superstition  and 
religion.  He  never  seems  to  have  felt,  as  other  sages 
of  Greece  felt,  the  haunting,  overshadowing  sense  of 
Divinity,  nor  realised  the  existence  of  a  Divine  Law 
of  righteousness  which  man  did  not  create  and  which 
he  cannot  destroy. 

And  thus,  my  brethren,  it  was  that  the  ethical 
theory  of  Epicurus  w^as  blended  with  no  sense  of 
reverential  awe  towards  the  Divine  Infinitude,  was 
based  on  no  lofty  conception  of  human  destiny  or 
duty,  and  was  centred  in  man  alone.  The  Epicurean 
theory  of  virtue,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "is  the  type  of  all 
those  who  make  an  enlightened  self-interest  the  basis 
of  right  and  wrong."  Enjoyment,  rightly  understood, 
was,  according  to  Epicurus,  the  supreme  end  of  life. 
Let  us  not  be  unjust.  Let  us  judge  the  doctrine  in 
its  best  form.  The  enjoyment  which  he  inculcated 
was  of  that  loftier  type  which  shrinks  from  every 
grossness,  "  not  debauchery  to-day  and  satiety  to-mor- 
row, but  equable  enjoyment  all  the  year  round,"  ^ 
and  enjoyment  too  that  consisted  in  refined  mental 
pleasures, — demanding  justice  towards  others,  and  the 
culture  of  friendship  and  of  w^isdom, — a  happiness 


1  Lewes,  '•  Biog.  Hist,  of  Philosophy,"  p.  233. 

7 


118 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


which  was  only  attainable  by  a  virtuous  frame  of 
mind  and  course  of  life.  In  his  own  words,  "  Plea- 
sure is  the  commencement  and  the  end  of  good,  but 
we  cannot  live  in  pleasure  unless  we  live  reasonably 
and  rightly."  ^    Such  was  the  doctrine  of  Epicurus. 

Well,  if  this  be  so,  I  can  imagine  some  of  my 
hearers  saying,  What  fault  have  you  to  find  ?  If  this 
be  the  doctrine  of  Epicurus,  where  is  the  harm  in 
Epicurean  morality?  What  more  would  you  have 
than  happiness,  sought  and  found  by  temperance, 
moderation,  and  justice?  What  else  did  St.  Paul 
mean  when  he  said,  "  Use  the  world  as  not  abusing  it. 
Let  your  moderation  be  known  unto  all  men.  The 
fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  temperance  ?"  Again  I  say,  Let 
us  not  be  unjust.  As  taught  by  Epicurus  himself,  and 
viewed  merely  as  a  practical  rule  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances, his  doctrine  of  pleasure  has  its  uses  and 
its  measure  of  truth.  Enjoyment  of  a  rational  kind 
is  an  element  of  human  life,  a  cup  to  be  sipped 
moderately  and  with  thankfulness.  ISTo  man  is  ena- 
moured of  pain.  No  man  need  kick  aside  pleasure 
as  sinful  or  hurtful,  when  it  clashes  with  no  duty, 
when  it  does  not  cloud  the  conscience  or  enfeeble  the 
will.  Nay,  more,  pleasure  in  its  place  is  helpful.  We 
work  better,  we  are  more  hopeful  and  more  vigorous. 


1  Diog.  Laert.,  x.  132. 


THE  EPICUREANS  AND  MODERN  LIFE.  HQ 


when  we  are  able  to  enjoy.  And  yet,  admitting  this 
most  fully,  I  say  that  as  an  exhaustive  theory  of  life 
the  doctrine  of  Epicurus  is  unspeakably  mischievous, 
and,  as  Platonist,  Stoic,  and  Christian  have  believed, 
strikes  at  the  root  of  all  true  nobility  of  soul. 

The  grand  evil  of  the  Epicurean  creed  is  this:  It 
makes  each  man  his  own  centre, — places,  if  I  may  so 
speak,  the  moral  centre  of  gravity  in  the  pleasurable 
sensibility  of  the  individual  man, — makes  himself,  his 
own  personal  pains  and  pleasures,  the  pivot  upon 
which  turns  the  entire  conduct  of  life.  Do  not  con- 
found Epicureanism  with  the  doctrine  which  makes 
the  pains  and  pleasures  of  the  great  sum  of  humanity, 
and  not  a  man's  own,  the  grand  motive  to  right  con- 
duct. This  theory  may  be  insufficient,  but  it  is  com- 
patible with  the  loftiest  nobility  of  character,  and 
claims  for  other  than  a  personal  end  the  denial  and 
sacrifice  of  self.  But  the  Epicurean  system  makes 
self  the  central  fact.  Do  not  misunderstand  me. 
Self-regarding  has  its  place  as  well  as  self-forgetting. 
There  is  scope  for  self-love  as  well  as  for  self-sacrifice 
in  the  world  and  in  the  heart  of  man.  Universal  self- 
sacrifice  would  issue  in  utter  absurdity.  It  is  not  the 
less  true  that  egotism,  selfishness,  indiff'erence  to  the 
rights  of  others,  supreme  regard  to  our  own  personal 
ease  and  comfort,  are  tendencies  of  our  nature  far 
stronger  than  the  sympathy  which  places  the  good  of 


120 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


others  side  by  side  with  our  own.  Epicureanism  in- 
tensifies that  part  of  our  nature  which  is  too  strong  as 
it  is,  makes  self  supreme^  chimes  in  with  our  baser 
rather  than  with  our  better  mind;  and,  instead  of 
counterbalancing  our  too  preponderant  impulse  to  love 
self  more  than  our  neighbour  and  more  than  God,  refers 
with  a  subtle  sophistry  to  self  all  that  surrounds  us, 
as  the  whirlpool  sucks  into  the  abyss  of  waters  every- 
thing which  floats  within  its  reach. 

''By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them."  What  have 
the  Epicureans  done  for  the  higher  life  of  humanity? 
In  its  best  shape  Epicureanism  was  little  better  than 
a  prudent  selfishness,  in  its  worst  it  degenerated  into 
vice.  In  St.  Paul's  day,  the  Epicureans  were  like  the 
Sadducees,  the  pleasure-loving  men  of  the  world,  who 
adopted  the  principle  but  repudiated  the  example  of 
their  ma,ster.  The  physical  philosophy  of  Epicurus 
produced  the  sublime  poem  of  Lucretius,  but,  in  the 
spirit  and  tone  of  his  morality,  in  his  austere  and  in- 
tense moral  earnestness,  Lucretius  was  far  more  of  a 
Stoic  than  an  Epicurean.  The  genial  and  pleasant 
Horace  was  an  Epicurean,  but  the  type  of  life  which 
Horace  preaches  is  lower  than  that  of  his  teacher.  Or, 
take  as  the  representatives  of  the  better  class  of 
Epicureans  in  Eoman  times,  of  men  who  understood 
how  to  seek  pleasure  in  a  refined,  gentlemanly  way, 
declining  every  public  duty,  and  living  a  life  of  lettered 


THE  EPICUEEAyS  AND  MODERN  LIFE.  121 


ease,  Atticus,  the  friend  of  Cicero.  Him  Sir  James 
Mackintosli  has  called  in  language  not  one  whit  too 
severe,  ''the  accomplished,  prudent,  friendly,  good- 
natured  time-server,  Atticus,  the  pliant  slave  of  every 
tyrant,  who  could  kiss  the  hand  of  Antony,  imbrued 
as  it  was  in  the  blood  of  Cicero."^  is"o,  Epicureanism 
at  its  best  displays  the  lower,  not  the  higher  side  of 
human  nature, — connives  at  its  frailty,  and  undermines 
its  strength.  It  was  not  Epicureanism  which  made 
Athens,  in  her  prime,  the  first-born  of  freedom,  the 
nurse  of  heroism,  intellect,  and  genius.  It  was  not 
Epicureanism  that  built  up  the  mighty  fabric  of 
Eoman  greatness.  In  the  development  of  the  Church, 
Epicureanism  took  no  part  except  to  stand  aside  and 
criticise  or  scoff.  It  is  not  Epicurean  principles  which 
have  made  England  what  she  is.  The  history  of  the 
six  centuries  between  Epicurus  and  Constantine 
furnishes  proof  more  than  enough  that  the  doctrine  of 
Epicurus,  with  its  affirmation  of  pleasure  and  its  nega- 
tion of  religion,  was  never  meant  for  such  a  being  as 
man  is  in  such  a  world  as  this. 

And  yet,  as  an  unconscious  philosophy  of  life,  as  a 
subtle  force  of  egotistic  impulse  ruling  the  man's  being, 
Epicureanism  exists  still,  plays  its  part  in  English 
society  to-day  as  it  did  in  Athens  and  Eome  twenty 


1  "  Dissertation  on  the  Progress  of  Ethical  Philosophy,"  p.  83. 


122 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


centuries  ago.  Are  there  no  young  men  now  who  are 
acting  with  more  or  less  of  distinct  consciousness  on 
the  maxim,  ^'  Seek  all  the  pleasure  you  can  get,  avoid 
all  the  pain" — who  will  shirk  every  duty  which  can 
possibly  be  shirked;  who  will  not,  if  they  know  it, 
put  their  hand  to  any  work  demanding  effort  of  brain 
or  the  shadow  of  self-denial ;  who  saunter  through  life 
by  the  pleasantest  path  which  they  can  find,  with  no 
thought  of  any  high  purpose,  or  care  for  much  beyond 
themselves  ?  Are  there  no  older  men,  who  look  with 
cynical  contempt  upon  all  the  questions,  scientific, 
religious,  economical,  political,  which  agitate  thinking 
minds,  whose  sole  philosophy  of  life  is  to  get  through 
it  with  as  little  trouble  to  themselves,  and  as  much 
ease  and  enjoyment  as  they  can?  Epicureanism,  as  a 
formal  creed,  may  be,  for  aught  I  know,  dead ;  as  a 
practical  end  of  life  it  is  potent  still ;  and  where  it  is 
potent,  it  is  potent  for  evil,  stripping  life  of  all  its 
grandeur,  in  its  best  shape  well-nigh  useless  to  society ; 
in  its  worst  shape,  mischievous;  and  as  regards  the 
individual  man  ruining  the  naturally  loftier  nature  by 
the  pervading  influence  of  selfish  and  egotistical  aims, 
plunging  natures  of  a  coarser  fibre  into  habits  of  gross 
indulgence. 

Most  of  my  hearers  will  be  familiar  with  that 
masterpiece  of  modern  prose  fiction,  ^^Eomola,"  and 
they  will  not  fail  to  recall  the  character  of  Tito,  de- 


THE  EPICUREANS  AND  MODERN  LIFE.  123 


picted  with  a  subtle  analysis  of  the  windings  and 
turnings  of  the  human  heart,  which  lays  it  bare  to  our 
inspection  like  a  piece  of  mechanism.  The  outward 
incidents  of  the  story  belong  to  a  time  and  a  land 
more  picturesque  than  our  own;  the  inner  life  de- 
lineated is  as  true  now  as  then,  in  the  England  of 
to-day  as  in  the  Florence  of  the  fifteenth  century.  And 
the  moral  of  this  picture  of  Tito  Melema  lies,  not  in  the 
vivid  story  of  his  outward  fortunes,  or  in  the  poetical 
justice  and  the  tragic  suddenness  of  his  death,  but  in 
the  unfolding,  step  by  step,  of  the  deterioration  of  a 
bright  and  gifted  nature  through  the  preference  of 
what  is  pleasant  to  what  is  right.  The  words  '^I  ought" 
and  I  ought  not "  have  vanished,  as  Mr.  Maurice 
observes,  from  Tito's  vocabulary.  There  comes  to  this 
young  Greek,  whose  only  fault  at  first  is  his  tendency 
to  make  life  easy  to  himself,  to  carry  his  human  lot, 
if  possible,  in  such  a  way  that  it  should  pinch  him 
nowhere,"  and  to  extract  the  utmost  sum  of  pleasure" 
from  the  world,  there  comes  to  Tito  the  occasion 
which  comes,  in  some  shape,  to  most  men,  when  he  is 
called  to  make  deliberate  choice  between  pleasure  and 
duty;  when  he  is  grasped  by  the  importunate  thought 
of  a  right  and  a  wrong,  and  '^is  obliged  to  pause  and 
decide  whether  he  will  surrender  and  obey,  or  whether 
he  will  give  the  refusal  that  must  carry  irrevocable 
consequences."    And  young  men  and  women  will  do 


124 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


well  to  ponder  this,  that  so  surely  as,  like  Tito,  they 
make  self-gratification,  not  conscience,  the  law  of  their 
life,  so  surely  will  moral  deterioration  follow, — God's 
judgment  on  selfishness  not  the  less  real,  because  it 
takes  place  within,  where  no  eye  beholds  it  but 
God's. 

Let  us  now  look  at  "  the  dregs  of  Epicurus" — at  a 
somewhat  coarser  type  of  modern  Epicurean  life.  I 
will  again  venture  to  borrow  my  illustration  from  the 
world  of  fiction,  not  the  less  belonging  for  all  that  to 
the  w^orld  of  real  life,  allowing  for  the  novelist's  right 
somewhat  to  heighten  the  picture.  Mr.  Anthony 
Trollope  shall  describe  to  us  the  character  of  Colonel 
Marrable: — ''He  was  one  of  those  men  who,  through 
their  long,  useless,  ill-flavoured  lives,  always  contrive 
to  live  well,  to  eat  and  drink  of  the  best,  to  lie  softly, 
and  to  go  about  in  purple  and  fine  linen,  and  yet  never 
have  any  m^oney.  ...  To  lie,  to  steal, — not  out  of  tills 
or  pockets,  because  he  knew  the  danger, — to  cheat,  .  . 
to  indulge  every  passion,  though  the  cost  to  others 
might  be  ruin  for  life;  to  know  no  gods  but  his  own 
bodily  senses,  and  no  duty  but  that  which  he  owed  to 
those  gods;  to  eat  all  and  produce  nothing;  to  love 
no  one  but  himself;  to  have  learned  nothing  but  how 
to  sit  at  table  like  a  gentleman;  to  care  not  at  all  for 
his  country  or  even  for  his  profession;  to  have  no 
creed,  no  party,  no  friend,  no  conscience,  to  be  troubled 


THE  EPICUREANS  AND  MODERN  LIFE. 


125 


with  nothing  that  touched  his  heart;  such  .  .  .  was  .  .  . 
the  Ufe  of  Colonel  Marrable."  Perhaps,"  observes 
the  novelist,  it  was  accounted  to  this  man  as  a  merit 
by  some  that  he  did  not  quail  at  any  coming  fate  .  .  . 
He  never  asked  himself  whether  he  had  aught  even  to 
regret  before  he  died  or  to  fear  afterwards."  ''There 
are  many  Colonel  Marrables  about  in  the  world, 
known  well  to  be  so  at  clubs,  in  drawing-rooms,  and 
by  the  tradesmen  who  supply  them.  Men  give  them 
dinners,  and  women  smile  upon  them.  The  best  of 
coats  and  boots  are  supplied  to  them.  They  never 
lack  cigars  or  champagne.  They  have  horses  to  ride 
and  servants  to  wait  upon  them,  more  obsequious  than 
the  servants  of  other  people.  And  men  will  lend  them 
money  too,  well  knowing  that  there  is  no  chance  of 
repayment.  Now  and  then  one  hears  a  horrid  tale  of 
some  young  girl  who  surrenders  herself  to  such  an  one, 
absolutely  for  love.  Upon  the  whole,  the  Colonel 
Marrables  are  popular."  ^ 

The  picture,  it  will  be  said,  is  overcharged.  It  may 
be  so.  I  know  too  little  of  the  world  it  describes  to 
vouch  for  the  verisimilitude  of  every  detail.  But  true 
in  spirit  and  substance  it  is,  and  such  ruined,  wasted 
lives  are  the  outcome  of  the  choice  or  bent  which 
makes  us   "  lovers  of  pleasure  more  than  lovers  of 


1  "The  Vicar  of  BuUhamptoa,"  pp.  208,  209. 


126 


•  ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


God," — which  tramples  on  conscience  for  the  gratifica- 
tion of  self.  Some  ideal  of  life  loftier  than  that  of  the 
Epicurean  is  surely  needed  in  this  world,  some  end 
and  purpose  v/hich  embraces  a  wider  scope  than  per- 
sonal interest  or  personal  pleasure.  We,  in  the  Eng- 
land of  this  hour,  and  those  of  us  especially  who  are 
born  and  nurtured  in  the  luxurious  middle  class,  ought 
to  recognise  the  need  of  subordinating  this  imperious 
craving  to  make  life  comfortable  and  easy,  to  some 
higher  idea  of  our  destiny,  to  some  truer  aim  of  our 
existence.  And  here  in  this  age  and  land,  an  ideal  of 
life  and  type  of  character,  unknown  to  Epicurus  and 
to  Athens,  are  subsisting  still — of  One,  the  spirit  of 
whose  earthly  career  is  summed  up  in  the  words,  ^^Lo, 
I  come  to  do  Thy  will,  0  God;"  the  Son  of  Man 
came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister,  and 
to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for  many  " — who,  neither 
refusing  pleasure  nor  making  light  of  pain,  held  loyalty 
to  God  and  love  to  man  to  be  better  than  pleasure,  to 
be  cherished  in  spite  of  pain — who,  from  the  throne 
of  His  cross,  has  created  an  ideal  of  life  which  neither 
Epicurean  nor  Stoic  knew,  and  who  has  penetrated  the 
world  with  a  Divine  power  to  conquer  the  selfish 
instincts,  and  to  spread  in  ever-widening  circles  the 
rippling  sympathies  of  love. 


VIII. 

THE  STOICS  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT, 


"All  the  facts  of  consciousness,  all  the  marvels  of  thought  remain  , 
whatever  changes  may  take  place  in  our  theories  respecting  them." 
— Lewes  {Problems  of  Life  and  Mind,  i.  158,  159). 

"There  are  some  truths  in  regard  to  which  we  are  not  warranted 
to  ask  the  why-  They  shine  in  their  own  light ;  and  we  feel  that  we 
need  no  light;  and  we  ask  no  light  wherewith  to  see  them." — 
M'CosH  {Intuitions  of  the  Human  Mind,  p.  385). 

"  Should  it  be  asserted  that  religious  ideas  are  products  of  the  re- 
ligious sentiment  .  .  .  the  problem  is  not  solved,  but  only  removed 
further  back.  •  .  .  Whence  comes  the  sentiment?  .  .  .  Any  theory 
of  things  which  takes  no  account  of  this  attribute  must  be  extremely 
defective." — Herbert  Spencer  {First  Principles,  p.  15). 

"  Philosophy  is  based  on  the  affirmation  of  God's  existence,  and 
not  upon  the  denial  of  it."— Fiske  {Cosmic  Philosophy,  ii.  377). 

u  ■f^-^iji;  cujuarog  dvayKaioTepov  lac&aL'  tov  yap  ^^v  KUKuq  to  redva- 
vai  KpEiaaov," — Epictetus  {Fragment,  xcii.;  Bidot,  p.  24). 

"Mundum  autem  censent  [Stoici]  regi  numine  Deorum,  euraque 
esse  quasi  communem  urbem  et  civitatem  hominum  et  Deorum." — 
Cicero  [De  Finibus,  iii.  19). 


VIIL 


"  Certain  philosophers  of  the  Epicureans,  and  of  the  Stoics,  en- 
countered him." — Acts  xvii.  18. 

The  Epicureans  and  the  Stoics  may  be  regarded  as 
the  representatives  of  two  types  of  human  nature,  of 
those  who  take  life  easily,  and  of  those  who  take  it 
seriously.  In  an  age  of  sceptical  weariness  and  of  pro- 
found superstition,  an  age  of  utter  demoralisation, 
overshadowed  by  imperial  despotism,  the  Stoics  appear 
as  endowed  with  the  loftiest  spirit  of  ideal  excellence, 
as  martyrs  of  freedom,  and  shining  examples  of  manly 
independence,  living  lives  of  heroic  virtue  under  every 
discouragement.  In  the  same  period  of  declining  Hel- 
lenic life,  the  fourth  and  third  centuries  before  Christ, 
in  which  Epicurus  preached  his  doctrine  of  pleasure, 
Zeno  taught  his  doctrine  of  resignation.  His  life 
corresponded  to  his  precepts,"  was  the  epitaph  in- 
scribed on  the  tomb  of  the  founder  of  the  philosophy 
of  the  Stoics ;  and  for  many  generations  the  disciples 
were,  upon  the  whole,  worthy  of  their  master.  In  the 
lifetime  of  St.  Paul  especially,  Koman  Stoicism  at  least 

afforded  proof  that  the  old  Roman  spirit  of  moral 

129 


130 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


austerity  was  not  yet  dead,  wliile  it  displayed  an  in- 
tellectual culture  to  whicli  the  men  of  the  earlier  com- 
monwealth were  strangers. 

You  will,  of  course,  readily  understand,  that,  in 
saying  this,  I  do  not  mean  to  deny  that  there  were 
grave  deficiencies  in  both  the  theory  and  practice 
of  the  Stoical  schools.  It  is  a  remark  of  Emerson, 
scarcely  intended,  I  should  think,  to  be  taken  with 
literal  strictness :  Every  Stoic  was  a  Stoic ;  but  in 
Christendom,  where  is  the  Christian?"  But  the  wheat 
never  springs  up  without  the  tares  springing  with  it. 
Every  Stoic  was  not  a  Stoic  any  more  than  every 
Christian  is  a  Christian.  In  the  philosophy  of  the 
Porch,  as  in  the  Christian  Church,  were  unworthy 
professors,  men  who  were  Stoics  only  because  they 
wore  the  philosopher's  cloak,  and  had  plaster-casts  of 
the  founder  in  their  rooms.  It  is  not  the  less  true 
that,  taking  it  for  all  in  all,  the  Stoical  philosophy 
was,  next  to  Christianity,  one  of  the  grandest  protests 
against  the  disorder  and  wickedness  of  the  world  that 
was  ever  made. 

The  Stoical  theory  of  morality  was  at  the  very  op- 
posite pole  to  that  of  Epicurus.  Wliile  the  system 
of  Epicurus  made  the  individual  man  himself,  his 
pains  and  pleasures,  the  moral  centre  of  life  and  the 
supreme  motive  of  action,  the  Stoics  looked  outside  the 
man  to  the  order  of  which  he  is  a  part,  and  placed 


THE  STOICS  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT.  131 


the  end  of  his  being  in  obedience  to  that  order.  The 
Stoical  system,  to  borrow  the  language  of  Mr.  Lecky, 

taught  that  our  reason  reveals  to  us  a  certain  law  of 
nature,  and  that  a  desire  to  conform  to  this  law,  irre- 
spectively of  all  considerations  of  reward  or  punish- 
ment, of  happiness  or  the  reverse,  is  a  possible  and 
sufficient  motive  of  virtue."  Thus,  while  the  practical 
aim  of  the  Epicurean  was  to  secure  all  the  pleasure, 
and  avoid  all  the  pain  which  can  possibly  be  secured 
or  avoided,  the  attitude  of  the  Stoic  towards  pleasure 
and  pain  was  that  of  a  certain  noble,  though  often 
enough  impracticable,  contempt  and  defiance. 

Stoical  orthodoxy  professed  to  regard  pain  as  no 
evil,  and  pleasure  as  no  good.  Placing  virtue  in  the 
conduct  of  life  in  harmony  with  the  order  of  nature, 
and  subjecting  the  individual  to  the  whole  of  which  he 
is  a  part,  the  Stoical  philosophy  theoretically  excluded 
every  personal  end — excluded  pleasure,  above  all,  as 
lowering  the  moral  energy,  and  cutting  the  sinews  of 
exertion.  Such  a  theory  was,  of  course,  an  exaggera- 
tion of  the  nobler  instincts  and  promptings  of  great 
souls,  and  certainly  was  not  the  whole  truth  about  our 
relation  to  the  universe.  But  though  truth  lies  be- 
tween two  extremes,  it  does  not,  as  Niebuhr  observes, 
always  lie  in  the  middle ;  and  undoubtedly  the  Stoics 
were  nearer  to  the  truth  than  the  Epicureans.  In 
seeking  outside  themselves  the  law  which  should  guide 


132 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


their  life ;  in  subordinating  personal  ends  to  obedience 
to  the  eternal  order ;  in  meeting  the  evils  of  our 
mortal  lot  with  resignation,  patience,  and  self-sacrifice, 
who  will  deny  that  the  Stoics,  with  all  their  exaggera- 
tion and  defects,  held  a  nobler  ideal,  and  lived  a  truer 
life  than  those  who  busied  themselves  mainly  about 
making  existence  pleasurable  ?  It  has  been  said  that 
there  was  a  presentiment  of  Eome  in  Zeno's  breast." 
We  may  go  further,  and  say  that  there  was  a  presenti- 
ment in  Zeno  of  the  Christian  Church  and  of  Him  who 
said,  Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  His 
righteousness."  "  He  that  findeth  his  life  shall  lose 
it ;  and  he  that  loseth  his  life  for  My  sake  shall 
find  it." 

The  ethical  theory  of  the  Stoics,  then,  may  be 
summed  up  as  consisting  in  the  subordination  of  our  in- 
stinctive love  of  pleasure,  and  instinctive  shrinking 
from  pain  to  obedience  to  the  moral  order  revealed  in 
the  world.  What,  however,  is  most  remarkable  and 
most  instructive  is  this,  that  this  ethical  theory,  "  whose 
very  failings  leaned  to  virtue  s  side,"  the  defects  and 
exaggerations  of  which  sprang  from  the  ardent  longing 
to  reach  spiritual  perfection  through  knowledge  of  the- 
laws  of  the  universe  and  by  stern  obedience  to  them, 
was  based  upon  a  purely  materialistic  theory  of  the 
whole  frame  of  things,  and  upon  the  recognition  in  every 
department  of  nature  of  the  reign  of  law.    The  Stoical 


THE  STOICS  ASB  MOLERy  THOUGHT.  133 


system  of  thought  ^^-as,  in  its  speculative  aspect,  simple 
materialism,  and  yet  it  is  matter  of  fact,  past  all  question, 
that  this  materialism  '\;\'as  compatible  with  a  profound 
and  intense  moral  earnestness,  and,  in  the  late  Stoics, 
with  a  devout  religious  spirit  springing  out  of  the 
consciousness  of  a  Divine  Eeason  penetrating  all 
Xature.  And  I  cannot  but  think  that  this  fact  has  a 
lesson  for  ourselves;  that,  on  the  one  hand,  it  may 
well  reassure  those  who  contemplate  with  dismay  the 
progress  of  thought  in  the  scientific  interpretation  of 
the  universe,  as  though  advancing  knowledge  must 
strip  it  of  its  divineness,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  check 
the  premature  exultation  of  some  who  seem  to  think 
that  all  religion  is  doomed  to  perish,  consumed  by  the 
spirit,  and  destroyed  by  the  brightness  of  science.  On 
the  contrary,  it  seems  to  me  that  this  chapter  in  the 
history  of  the  human  mind  is  one  of  many  proofs  that 
religion  in  the  soul  of  man  is  indestructible,  and  that 
it  can  flourish  in  an  intellectual  climate  apparently 
the  most  unfavourable.  Man's  conception  of  the 
Divine  changes  with  the  changing  light  of  knowledge, 
as  his  thoughts  are  narrowed  or  widened  in  the  circles 
of  the  suns,  but  his  sense  of  some  Divine  Thino:  in 
which  "he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being,"  cannot 
be  swept  away  by  any  incoming  flood  of  new  ideas 
about  the  order  through  which  the  Infinite  Power  is 
manifested.    The  new  ideas  may,  for  a  season,  eclipse 


134 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


the  faith,  but  it  is  only  for  a  season,  and  faith  reasserts 
itself  in  the  world  of  new  ideas. 

Look,  then,  my  brethren,  at  the  facts.  Widely  sun- 
dered— nay,  separated  by  a  whole  hemisphere  of 
thought — as  were  the  Epicureans  and  the  Stoics  in 
their  theory  of  human  life,  both  were  materialistic  in 
their  speculative  conception  of  the  universe.  If  Epi- 
curus, following  in  the  wake  of  earlier  thinkers,  built 
up  the  system  of  things  from  the  combinations  and 
variations  of  primordial  atoms,  the  Stoics  adopted  the 
idea  of  Heracleitus,  who  derived  all  things  from  a  pri- 
mitive element  of  ''fire."  In  the  opinion,  indeed,  of 
Mr.  Grote,  "  the  fire  meant  by  Heracleitus  was  only 
symbolical  of  the  universal  process  of  destruction  and 
renovation."  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
Stoical  fire  was  distinctly  physical.  The  whole  uni- 
verse— earth,  stars,  the  mind  of  man,  gods,  and  the 
souls  of  heroes — all  was  material.  The  human  mind 
was  the  product  of  the  impressions  made  by  external 
objects — had,  in  fact,  no  existence  whatever  apart  from 
those  impressions,  and  independent  of  them.  God  was 
in  the  primaeval  fire-mist  out  of  which  all  has  pro- 
ceeded— from  which  all  things  have  been  developed 
according  to  fixed  immutable  laws  under  the  guidance 
of  an  all-pervasive  principle,  active  everywhere,  a 
Divine  Keason  working  in  and  through  this  universal 
frame  of  things.  JSTo  physical  theory  could  well  be  more 


THE  STOICS  AXD  MODERN  THOUGHT.  135 


distinctly  materialistic  than  the  Stoical,  and  yet  the  fact 
is  indisputable  that  this  system  of  thought  recognised 
in  its  own  way  the  presence  of  Divinity  in  nature,  and 
was  compatible  with  a  purity  of  morals,  a  high  ideal  of 
life,  a  contempt  of  death,  a  resignation  to  inevitable 
evils,  a  "patience  sovereign  o'er  transmuted  ill," 
second  only  in  their  sublime  spiritual  energy  to  early 
Christianity  itself.  And  this,  in  my  judgment,  is  a 
fact  of  far  reaching  significance  for  ourselves. 

Of  the  intense  moral  earnestness  and  real  re- 
ligious devotion  of  the  Stoical,  not  less  than  of  the 
Platonic,  schools  of  philosophy  in  the  first  century  of 
the  Christian  era,  I  have  already  spoken  in  a  previous 
sermon.  I  advert  now  simply  to  the  fact.  Let  us 
hear  on  this  point  a  few  words  of  Archbishop  Trench  : 
''The  Stoic  Porch,"  he  says,  was,  in  some  sort,  the 
noblest  school  of  philosophy  in  the  ancient  world,  and 
had  never  shown  itself  so  nobly  as  in  those  evil  times. 
...  It  had  then  been  seen  what  this  philosophy  .  .  . 
could  arm  men  to  do  and,  still  more,  to  suff'er.  When 
all  was  base  and  servile  elsewhere,  it  was  the  last 
refuge  and  citadel  of  freedom."^  Yes,  Stoicism  was 
the  Church  militant  of  Paganism,  with  its  ''noble  army 
of  martyrs,"  with  its  saintly  lives,  and  its  confessors  of 


1  "  Lectures  on  Plutarch,"  p.  92.  In  what  follows  I  am  largely  indebted 
to  M.  Ernest  Havet,  "Le  Christianisme  et  ses  Origines,"  ii.  254,  et  seq. 


136 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


truth.  Lord  Macaulay,  in  liis  ''Essay  on  Lord  Bacon," 
sneers  at  sucli  philosophy  as  useless^  unpractical,  and 
Utopian.  A  very  pitiful  and  shallow  sneer  this,  as  it 
seems  to  me, — a  sneer  which  could  be  directed  with 
equal  force  against  Christianity/  Neither  St.  Paul 
nor  Zeno  has  given  us  science,  but  both  in  their  own 
place  have  helped  suffering  human  beings,  who  had 
fallen  on  evil  days,  to  live  saintly  and  heroic  lives. 
The  Stoics  bore  with  silent  endurance  the  evils  of 
nature  which  they  knew  not  how  to  cure,  but,  in  the 
presence  of  human  wickedness,  armed  with  tyrannical 
might,  they  rose  up  in  moral  protest  and  defiance. 
Those  paradoxes  about  pain  and  death  being  no  evil 
were  the  contempt  which  lofty  souls  felt  for  Tiberius 
or  Caligula  or  Nero,  were  the  protest  of  conscience 
against  brute  force.  Such  men  as  Annseus  Cornutus, 
as  Helvidius  Prisons,  as  Psetus  and  his  wife  Arria,  as 
Musonius  Eufus,  and  others  who  dared  look  the 
masters  of  many  legions  in  the  face,  and  tell  them  that 
their  works  were  not  good  but  evil,  who  could  say, 
''It  is  for  you  to  kill,  it  is  for  us  to  die." — "You  can 
torture  or  slay,  but  you  cannot  injure" — such  men 
who,  in  their  protest  against  tyranny,  baseness,  and 
vice,  "loved  not  their  lives  unto  the  death,"  deserve 


1  I  was  not  sorry  to  find  that  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis,  speaking  of  this  essay,  says, 
"  His  remarks  on  the  ancient  philosophy  are  for  the  most  part  shallow  and 
ignorant  in  the  extreme  "  ("  Letters,"  p.  93). 


THE  STOICS  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT. 


137 


to  have  their  names  reoristered  on  the  bead-roll  of 
Christian  martyrs.  This  high-flown  language  about 
contempt  of  sufiPering  and  death,  which  sounds  to  us 
somewhat  stilted  and  extravagant,  appears  as  a  very 
different  thing  when  we  remember  that  these  men  held 
their  lives  in  their  hands,  just  as  Garat,  who  had  read 
Seneca  in  his  youth  and  thought  his  morality  unreal, 
read  him  again  in  prison  during  the  Eeign  of  Terror, 
and  found  that  it  was  a  morality  that  inspired  fortitude 
and  courage  when  the  guillotine  was  hanging  over  his 
head."^ 

Nor  were  the  Stoics  so  wholly  visionary  and 
unpractical  as  their  paradoxical  language  seems  to 
imply.  Stoical  orthodoxy,  like  every  other  orthodoxy, 
was  greatly  modified  in  practice,  with  amiable 
inconsistency,  letting  in  through  the  window  the 
human  sympathies  against  which,  in  theory,  they 
had  shut  the  door.  With  a  view  of  the  Divine 
nature,  which  in  strictly  logical  form  was  that  of  a 
wholly  impersonal  deity,  many  of  them  contrived  to 
blend  faith  in  a  Providence,  in  a  moral  government  of 
the  world,  in  a  future  state,  and  to  cherish  a  devout 
mystical  contemplation  of  the  Supreme  holiness  of  the 
One  Spirit  of  the  universe;  as  Seneca,  for  example, 
who  speaks  of  God  as  having  neither  head  nor  heart. 


1  Havet,  ii.  256,  257. 


138 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


when  lie  comes  to  use  language  of  consolation  or 
exhortation  writes  like  a  Christian  divine. 

I  repeat,  then,  here  was  a  materialistic  creed  com- 
patible with  some  sort  of  belief  in  a  Divine  Ruler  of 
men,  and  with  a  profound  moral  and  religious  earnest- 
ness. I  need  hardly  say  that  the  creed  of  materialism 
in  any  shape  is  not  my  own,  but  the  facts  which  I 
have  now  indicated  are  brought  forward  to  illustrate 
the  position  that  the  moral  and  spiritual  nature  of 
man  is  too  strong  to  be  suppressed  even  by  a  material- 
istic interpretation  of  the  universe.  As  I  have  said 
before,  so  I  say  again,  whatever  may  become  of  the 
human  moulds  in  which  theology  has  been  cast, 
religion  in  the  soul  of  man,  God's  witness  for  Him- 
self, will  survive,  however  profoundly  scientific  re- 
search may  change  our  conceptions  of  the  order  of 
nature. 

Now,  many  of  my  hearers  are  perfectly  familiar 
with  the  fact  of  how  mighty  a  change  has  come  over 
educated  thought  within  the  last  twenty  or  even  ten 
years  in  the  conception  of  natural  order.  The  views 
of  ancient  thinkers  like  Democritus  and  Heracleitus 
were  marvellous  foreshadowings  of  the  discoveries  of 
our  own  age,  but  still  were  rather  the  product  of 
speculative  genius  than  built  upon  inductive  reason- 
ing. It  is  not  so  now.  The  facts  upon  which  modern 
science  builds,  and  many  of  the  deductions  drawn 


THE  STOICS  Ayi)  MODERN  THOUGHT. 


139 


from  those  facts  can  only  be  questioned  by  those  who 
should  do  as  the  opponents  of  Galileo  did, — shut  their 
eyes  when  asked  to  look  for  themselves  through  his 
telescope  at  Jupiter's  moons.  The  facts  are  here 
whether  we  acknowledge  them  or  not;  and  it  is  as 
Pascal  said  of  Galileo's  doctrine  of  the  movement  of 
the  earth :  If  it  does  really  turn,  the  whole  con- 
clave of  cardinals  cannot  prevent  it  turning,  nor 
themselves  turning  with  it.  And  in  general  terms 
the  affirmation  of  modern  thought  is  this:  It  sees 
in  all  things  the  evolution  of  being  from  lower  to 
higher  forms, — it  blends  the  world  of  matter  and  the 
world  of  mind  into  one  complex,  intricate  harmony, 
— it  recognises  everywhere  the  reign  of  law,  excluding 
all  capricious  interferences, — it  comprehends  all  things 
past  and  present  in  one  mighty  organic  whole.  There 
are,  no  doubt,  gaps  in  the  evidence,  ^  and  the  mystery 
which  lies  beyond  all  this  cannot  be  grasped ;  but 
even  reluctant  thinkers  are  compelled,  by  overwhelming 
cogency  of  proof  in  some   departments,  by  highest 


1  These  gaps  are  in  fact  very  serious.  I  state,  upon  good  scientific 
authority,  that  no  proof  is  forthcoming  of  the  origin  of  life  from  inor- 
ganic matter,  or  of  the  origin  of  man  from  some  "  ape-like  creature " 
(Darwin).  I  may  add  that  in  the  region  of  psychology  I  have  been 
unable  to  find  any  conclusive  explanation  of  the  origin  of  consciousness 
in  the  nervous  organism,  or  any  valid  proof  of  the  affirmation  that 
the  will  is  wholly  determined  by  antecedent  psychical  states.  Let 
the  reader  compare  Herbert  Spencer  ("Principles  of  Psychology,"  vol.  i. 
p.  4(2,  et  seq.,  and  p.  500,  et  seq.)  with  Kirkman  ("Philosophy  without 


140 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


probability  .  in  others,  to  form  this  conception  of  the 
order  of  nature. 

Is  this,  then,  materialism.  ?  Is  what  we  call  matter 
the  root  out  of  which  all  things  spring?  It  is  im- 
possible to  say  this,  unless  we  enlarge  our  definition  of 
matter  and  include  within  it  all  the  marvels  of  life  and 
mind.  No  doubt  there  have  been  and  are  men,  who, 
dwelling  largely  on  the  physical  side  of  nature  and  the 
physiological  side  of  man,  have  lost  all  faith  in  the 
Divine  aspects  of  nature  and  in  the  spiritual  destiny  of 
man.  This  cannot  be  denied.  Yet  even  materialism 
need  not  necessarily  be  atheistic.  To  quote  the  words 
of  an  eminent  thinker,  who  has  closely  studied  the 
relations  of  body  and  mind :  "  The  imputation  of 
materialism,  which  ought  never  to  have  been  so  lightly 
made,  it  is  quite  certain  that  the  majority  of  scientific 
men  would  earnestly  disclaim.  Moreover,  the  materia- 
list, as  such,  is  not  under  any  logical  constraint 
whatever,  to  deny  either  the  existence  of  God  or  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  or  free  will."  ^    And  I  go  yet 


Assumptions,"  c.  xi.  188,  et  seq.).  I  say  this  because  I  believe  that  it  is 
more  than  ever  incumbent  upon  us  to  bear  in  mind  the  wise  caution 
against  treating  hypothesis  as  fact,  which  Dr.  Virchow  has  urged  in  a  spirit 
certainly  not  unfriendly  to  science  ("  Freedom  of  Science  in  the  Modern 
State,"  1878,  Eng.  tr.).  But  were  every  gap  in  the  evidence  for  evolution 
filled  up,  my  own  faith  in  the  Divine  source  from  which  the  process 
emanates,  and  by  whose  Infinite  Life  it  is  a  process  at  all,  would  remain 
unshaken,  and  my  faith  in  human  destiny  under  Divine  guidance  no 
whit  impaired.  Evolution  explains  everything  and  explains  nothing. 
I  Maudsley,  "  Body  and  Mind,"  p.  322. 


THE  STOICS  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT.  141 


further  and  say,  what  is  known  to  many  who  hear  me, 
that,  in  the  deeper  philosophy  of  the  age,  the  materia- 
listic hypothesis  is  held  to  be  utterly  inadequate ;  that 
mind  and  matter  are  regarded  merely  as  names  for 
two  series  of  phenomena,  in  ultimate  analysis  alike 
incomprehensible,  and,  it  may  be,  springing  out  of 
some  higher  unity  which  is  diflPerent  from  both/  All 
science  only  conducts  us  at  last  to  the  shores  of  that 
immortal  sea  which  brought  us  hither/'  to  the 
depths  and  heights,  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  In- 
finitude which  surrounds  us ;  and  still  as  of  old  may 
the  question  be  asked,  "  Canst  thou  by  searching  find 
out  God  ?  Canst  thou  find  out  the  Almighty  to  per- 
fection ?  It  is  high  as  heaven  ;  what  canst  thou  do  ? 
deeper  than  hell ;  what  canst  thou  know  ?" 

My  brethren,  it  is  so.  We  cannot  comprehend, 
under  any  formula  which  human  intellect  can  grasp, 
or  human  language  frame,  the  Infinite  and  Eternal 
Spirit.  Yet,  the  highest  thought  of  this  age  recognises 
the  fact  that  there  is  a  reality  other  than  the  things 
which  we  touch  and  see ;  and  corresponding  to  this 
intellectual  affirmation,  is  the  witness  for  the  Divine 
reality  which  is  found  in  the  essentially  religious 
nature  of  man.    Professor  Tyndall  has  spoken  of  "the 


1  See  Herbert  Spencer,  "  First  Principles,"  pp.  557-559.    Also  "  Mind,"  No. 
X.,  April  1878,  p.  205 ;  and  Maguire,  "  The  Platonic  Idea,"  c.  ix.  "  Immortality." 
8 


142 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


wonderful  plasticity  of  the  tlieistic  idea  which  enables 
it  to  maintain,  through  many  changes,  its  hold  upon 
superior  minds."  Yes,  for  the  idea  of  God  corresponds 
to  that  which  is  deepest  in  the  soul  of  man,  where  He 
reveals  Himself  in  spiritual  intuitions  which  cannot 
be  shaped  into  perfectly  adequate  thoughts,  still  less 
syllabled  in  words,  but  which  are  real  and  true  not- 
withstanding. And  so  far  as  the  past  is  concerned,  we 
have  evidence  forthcoming  that  the  religious  element 
does  not  succumb  to  the  intellectual,  but  is  for  ever 
adapting  itself  to  altered  conditions  of  thought,  and 
yet  remains  a  living  thing.  Stoicism,  in  many  edu- 
cated minds,  replaced  polytheism,  replaced  scepticism, 
replaced  total  unbelief  in  the  Divine.  Christianity  re- 
placed Stoicism.  The  Stoics  preached,  and,  to  some  ex- 
tent, lived  out  a  theory  of  life  of  surpassing  grandeur. 
The  Stoic  philosophy  contended  at  great  odds  with 
that  which  was  worse  than  itself;  it  yielded  only  to 
that  which  was  better.  "  Christianity,"  as  Edmund 
Burke  has  said,  "  humanised  the  idea  of  Divinity."  It 
met  human  needs  with  a  higher  revelation  of  the 
Divine  nature,  and  a  fuller  and  therefore  truer  type  of 
manhood  than  the  Stoics  knew.  It  touched  the  heart 
of  man  to  finer  issues,  kindling  a  loftier  enthusiasm  as 
it  presented  the  matchless  life  and  perfect  offering  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  It  realised  the  city  of  God,  of 
which  the  Stoic  only  dreamed,  drawing  together  into 


THE  STOICS  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT.  I43 


one  brotherhood  by  its  sovereign  legend  of  pity," 
and  its  proclamation  of  the  fatherly  love  of  God  to- 
wards all  mankind — the  slave  and  the  outcast,  the  ia:- 
norant  and  the  lettered,  women  and  children,  the  bond 
and  the  free.  That  revelation  of  God  through  the 
highest  type  of  man  corresponds  to  our  deepest  spirit- 
ual needs ;  and  though  even  the  highest  type  of  man- 
hood can  give  us  but  a  partial  disclosure  of  the  infinite 
depths  of  Godhead,^  it  gives  us  all  that  it  seems  possi- 
ble to  give  here,  making  aspiration  and  trust  the  forces 
that  impel  our  lives,  while  our  souls,  like  those  who 
watch  for  the  morning,  look  out  for  the  perfect  day. 

1  John  xiv.  28  :  "  My  Father  is  greater  than  I."  "  Minor  Patre  secundum 
Humanitatem." — Quicunque  Vult.,  sect.  31.  "Which,"  says  Waterland, 
"needs  no  comment." — "Critical  History  of  the  Athanasian  Creed,"  p. 
175.  "Dangerous  it  were  for  the  feeble  brain  of  man  to  wade  far  into 
the  doings  of  the  Most  High  ;  Whom,  although  to  know,  be  life,  and  joy 
to  make  mention  of  His  name ;  yet  our  soundest  knowledge  is  to  know 
that  we  know  Him  not  as  indeed  He  is,  neither  can  know  Him:  and  our 
safest  eloquence  concerning  Him  is  our  silence,  when  we  confess  without 
confession  that  His  glory  is  inexplicable,  His  greatness  above  our  capacity 
and  reach.  He  is  above,  and  we  upon  earth  ;  therefore  it  behoveth  our  words 
to  be  wary  and  few." — Hookee  ("  Ecclesiastical  Polity,"  Book  I.  vol.  i.  p.  149. 
Oxford,  1845). 


IX. 

HUMANI7Y  AND  GOD. 


"We  feel  that  we  are  greater  than  we  know."— Wordsworth. 


"  False  ideas  may  be  refuted  indeed  by  argument,  but  by  true 
ideas  alone  are  they  expelled." — John  Henry  Newman  {Apolo- 
gia, p.  48). 

"  It  is  not  science  in  the  narrow  sense  which  can  order  our  be- 
liefs, but  philosophy ;  not  science  which  can  solve  our  problems  of 
life,  but  religion.  And  religion  demands  for  its  understanding  the 
religious  mind  and  the  spiritual  experience," — F.  Harrison  {Nine- 
teenth Century,  June  1877,  p.  631). 

"  'ATiXa  fi^v  Koi  avdpunov  ye  ipvxv  V  f^Trep  ti  kol  aXko  tuv  avdpu- 
TTLVUV  Tov  deiov  fieTEx^t,  OTL  fj.Ev  jSaGiTicvei  kv  Tjplv  (pavepbv,  oparat  6e 
ov6^  avrrj.  "A  XPV  naravoovvra  /x?)  KUTacppovelv  ruv  aopdruv,  a7JC  en 
Tuv  ■ytyvo/Lcivuv  ttjv  dvvajuiv  avrojv  liarafJ-avOdvovTa  ri/udv  to  6ac/x6viovJ' 
Socrates  {Xenoph.  Memorab.,  iv.  3,  14). 

"L'homme  n'est  qu'un  roseau  pensant  .  .  .  Quand  I'univers  1'^- 
craseroit,  Thomme  serait  encore  plus  noble  que  ce  qui  le  tue,  parce- 
qu'il  sait  qu'il  meurt:  et  I'avantage  que  I'univers  a  sur  lui,  I'univers 
n'en  sait  rien." — Pascal  {Pens^es,  i.  iv.  6). 

"The  worship  the  heart  lifts  above 
And  the  heavens  reject  not : 
The  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star, 

Of  the  night  for  the  morrow, 
The  devotion  to  something  afar 
From  the  sphere  of  our  sorrow." 

— Shelley. 


 £7r£i  Kal  TovTov  biojuac  dOavaToiaiv 

evx^odaL-  TzdvTeg  6h  6eo)v  x<^t^ovg'  dvdpun-oi." 

Homer  {Odyss.,  iii.  47,  48). 


IX. 


"  For  we  are  also  His  ofispring." — Acts  xvii.  28. 

What,  tlien,  does  this  brief  chapter  of  human  history 
say  to  us  about  the  nature  of  man  ?  and  has  it  any 
witness  to  the  nature  of  God  ? 

Are  we  in  truth  only  such  stuff  as  dreams  are 
made  of,"  and  is  our  "  little  Hfe  rounded  with  a  sleep?" 
Does  each  consciousness,  born  of  death,  sink  into  death 
again  as  its  quick  course  on  earth  runs  out?  Is  this 
mighty  order  of  things  infolded  by  no  Infinite  Life, 
governed  by  no  Supreme  Mind?  and  has  it  but  a  little 
longer  date  than  ourselves,  speeding  onward  to  the 
inevitable  day  when  nor  human  spark  is  left,  nor 
glimpse  divine,"  when  death 

"  Great  Anarch  lets  the  curtain  fall 

And  universal  darkness  buries  all  "  ? 

So  men  are  thinking  and  saying  in  these  times.  ^ 
If  what  they  say  is  true,  then  something  else  is  true 


1 "  We  have  thus  reached  the  beginning  as  well  as  the  end  of  the 
present  visible  universe,  and  have  come  to  the  conclusion,  that  it  began 
in  time,  and  will  in  time  come  to  an  end."  "  Death  will  ultimately  over- 
take the  race  just  as  remorselessly  as  the  individual."— "The  Unseen  Uni- 
verse," pp.  93,  152.  "The  evolution  of  man.  .  .  is  .  .  .  but  an  inevitable 
result  of  a  vast  chain  of  antecedent  events,  not  provably  elaborated 

147 


148 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


also.  Man  is  greater  than  his  destiny,  and  is  the  living 
lie  whose  veriest  delusions  are  nobler  than  the  truth, 
whose  trusts  and  aspirations  laugh  to  scorn  the  cruel 
irony  of  his  fate. 

For  as  we  stand  with  St.  Paul  on  the  Areopagus,  the 
vision  which  meets  us  is,  with  all  its  shadows,  a  vision 
of  human  greatness.  It  is  a  vision  of  life  on  this  earth, 
clothed  with  a  vesture  of  beauty,  the  outward  glory  of 
which  is  the  weak  symbol  of  ''the  faculty  divine" 
which  has  shaped  it.  It  is  a  vision  of  keen  intellect 
questioning  with  inexhaustible  and  eager  solicitude  the 
mystery  of  the  Infinite,  and  of  natures,  impelled  by  an 
insatiable  thirst  for  knowledge,  consumed  by  a  passion 
of  unfulfilled  longings,  ever  striving  to  break  through 
the  earthly  environment,  ever  striving  to  rise  through 
sensuous  symbols  to  the  Spiritual  and  the  Divine. 
We  see  men  who  cannot  rest  either  in  superstition  or 
unbelief,  passing  from  the  one  to  the  other  in  turn,  or 
flinging  off  both,  in  search  for  a  Supreme  Good.  We 
see  men,  whose  investigation  of  truth  becomes  lighted 
up  with  emotion,  born  of  reverence  for  things  Divine — 
men,  whose  sceptical  uncertainties,  ever  renewed,  yet 

under  supreme  guidance,  but  probably  simply  from  that  uncaleulating 

necessity  of  consequence  inherent  in  the  very  existence  of  matter." — R.  H. 

Eyton,  "The  Esthetics  of  Physicism,  Westminster  Review,"  No.  84,  Oct. 

1872,  p.  445,  "Man  ...  at  death  .  .  .  returns  to  the  same  condition  of 
nothingness,  as  far  as  consciousness  is  concerned,  as  was  the  case  prior 
to  his  embryonic  existence." — Robeet  Lewins,  M.  D.  ("Life  and  Mind," 
p.  13). 


HUMANITY  AND  GOD. 


149 


never  satisfying,  seek  the  certitude  wliicli  eludes  tliem. 
— men,  who  spurn  indolent  acquiescence  in  the  things 
which  are  seen  even  when  despairing  of  attaining  the 
things  which  are  7iot  seen,  who  scorn  to  eat,  drink,  and 
be  merry,  because  to-morrow  they  die,  who  can  find 
no  home  or  resting-place  in  earthly  enjoyment,  who 
summon  up  lofty  ideas  of  an  impracticable  virtue,  who 
are  ready  to  fling  away  life  rather  than  be  consciously 
false  to  truth,  or  become  the  slaves  of  baseness.  And, 
rising  high  above  all  this  brilliant  picture  of  art  and 
heroism  and  intellect  and  moral  earnestness  and  inten- 
sity of  spiritual  longing  comes  the  story,  falling  from 
Jewish  lips,  of  a  life  which  is  the  crown  of  all  lives,  of 
a  death  which  fitly  consummated  the  life,  and  of  an 
immortal  hope  dawning  upon  all  mankind. 

The  truth,  then,  which  is  written  on  this  page  of 
history  is,  that  men  are  impelled  by  forces  which 
suggest  an  origin  and  a  destiny  quite  other  than  earthly. 
The  inquiring  intellect,  the  high  purpose,  the  restless 
dissatisfaction,  the  scorn  of  baseness,  and  the  hatred  of 
lies  which  we  have  seen  in  battle  with  their  opposites 
are  elements  in  the  history  of  our  race  which  will  not 
fit  interpretations  of  the  universe  which  shut  out  God. 
"  Whether  man  be  from  the  brutes  or  not,  he  is  assu- 
redly not  of  them."^    He  looks  before  and  after  and 


1  Huxley,  "  Man's  Place  in  Nature,"  pp.  109, 110. 
8* 


150 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


pines  for  wliat  is  not."  He  has  religious  sentiments 
and  religious  ideas — under  wliat  conditions  evolved 
makes  no  difference — and  whether  we  call  them  delu- 
sions or  not,  they  are  none  the  less  facts  as  parts  of 
his  own  nature.  As  he  rises  in  the  scale  of  being,  he 
reaches  forth  after  the  Eternal  and  the  Infinite.  Facts 
like  these  claim  answer  to  the  questions,  Whence,  and 
Whither,  and  Why?  In  some  shape  or  other,  men 
have  always  answered  these  questions— /rom  God,  and 
to  God.  All  mythologies,  all  religions,  almost  all  phi- 
losophies, even  those  which,  in  revolt  against  popular 
faiths,  have  sought,  by  negation  of  God,  to  sound  the 
abyss  of  being,  are  blind  gropings  in  the  dark  after  the 
unfathomable  secret,  are  indications  of  the  persistence 
in  human  souls  of  this  sense  of  the  Infinite  and  the 
Divine. 

Now,  to  trace  back  this  ineradicable  consciousness 
to  the  dreams  and  shadows  which  haunted  and  terrified 
primitive  men^  is  to  unfold  its  history;  it  is  not  to  ex- 
plain its  root.  As  it  has  been  well  said,  Dogs  also 
have  shadows  and  dreams,  and  nothing  much  has  come 
come  of  it."^  Man  was  a  living  soul  before  he  could 
have  had  any  idea  of  a  soul  at  all,  and  it  is  that  self- 
hood of  his  which  has  given  to  shadows,  echoes,  and 


1  Herbert  Spencer,  "Principles  of  Sociology,"  vol.  i.  c.  x.  et  seq. 
^  Rev.  Baldvein  Brown. 


HUMANITY  AND  GOD. 


151 


dreams  all  their  significance.  Vainly  did  early  Greek 
speculation  strive  to  break  loose  from  mythology,  and 
explain  ''the  things  which  are  seen  as  made  from 
things  that  do  appear."  Precious  as  science  is,  there  is 
something  more  precious  still :  and  Socrates  brought 
man  back  to  the  study  of  himself,  Plato  to  the  con- 
templation of  the  Infinite.  It  is  idle  to  complain 
that  barren  questions  about  the  origin  of  things 
thrust  out  rational  investigation,  that  the  disputes 
of  metaphysicians  and  theologians  nipped  in  the 
bud  the  physical  research  of  the  Alexandrian  Schools. 
Wasted  efibrts  of  intellects,  perhaps,  such  questions 
were.  Blurred  pages  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind 
it  is  possible  that  they  are.  But  one  thing,  at  least, 
they  teach  us,  man's  reaching  after  the  Eternal,  the 
restless  seeking  of  his  soul  after  God. 

No.  It  is  of  very  little  use  warning  us  off  the 
domain  of  the  Invisible,  telling  us,  in  the  interests  of 
what  we  can  touch  and  see,  that  past  altar  and  through 
church  and  temple  is  no  avenue^  and  that  man : 

"  Such  splendid  purpose  in  his  eyes, 
But  rolls  the  psalm  to  wintry  skies, 
And  builds  him  fanes  of  fruitless  prayer." 

Men  might,  perhaps,  worship  more  wisely,  but  wor- 
ship in  some  shape  they  will.  It  is  of  very  little  use 
reiterating  with  passionate  insistance  that  the  super- 
natural, if  by  that  is  meant  the  Divine  Source  of  all 


152 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


being,  is  a  mere  illusion,  or  that  theological  thought  is 
a  cloudland  in  which  men  have  mapped  out  mere 
streaks  of  vapour,  mistaking  them  for  solid  conti- 
tinents  and  islands.  Souls  which  know  that  they  are 
alive  will  continue  to  feel  after  God,  and  find  Him  in 
spite  of  all. 

See  for  a  moment  how  this  matter  stands.  In  these 
times,  as  in  the  time  of  Seneca  and  of  St.  Paul,  thought 
finds  itself  by  its  own  confession  hemmed  in  on  every 
side  by  Infinitude.  The  great  thinker  to  whom  even 
those  who  dissent  from  him  most  widely  will  acknow- 
ledge how  much  they  owe,  is  compelled  by  his  loyalty 
to  truth  to  commence  his  work  on  "  Synthetic  Philo- 
sophy "  by  seeking  the  reconciliation  of  religion  and 
science,  by  bowing  with  religious  reverence  before  the 
mystery  of  an  Unknowable  Power.^  Auguste  Comte 
supplements  his  positive  philosophy  with  a  positive 
religion,  and  the  disciple  who  refuses  to  follow  his 
master  from  the  lecture-hall  into  the  temple,  even  he 
is  awed  as  he  gazes  on  the  eternal  ocean  which  beats 
upon  the  shores  of  our  lives,  for  which  we  have  neither 
bark  nor  sail,  but  the  clear  vision  of  which  is  as 
salutary  as  it  is  formidable.^  And  for  my  own  part,  I 
know  of  few  things  more  pathetic  than  the  earnest  and 


1  Herbert  Spencer,  "  First  Principles."   Part  i. 

2  Littr6,  "Paroles  de  Philosophie  Positive,"  apud  "Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,"  prem.  livr.,  Sept.  1869. 


HUMAXITY  AXD  GOD. 


153 


eloquent  pleading  of  Comte's  English  interpreter/  for 
a  spiritual  religion — pleading  so  truly  Christian  in  its 
tone  and  spirit  even  while  rejecting  Christian  ideas, 
and  echoing  so  much  of  Christian  aspiration  though 
having  no  part  or  lot  in  Christian  belief.  It  is  vain. 
You  cannot  thrust  rehgion  out  of  the  heart.  If  it  be  a 
dream,  it  is  a  dream  that  is  of  mightier  power  than 
waking  life.  But  it  is  yiot  a  dream.  It  is  the  pro  - 
foundest  reality  of  our  nature — the  impulse  at  bottom 
of  all  intellectual  questionings,  the  spring  of  noble 
lives,  the  cry  of  humanity  to  its  invisible  Lord.  And 
still  the  question  recurs:  What  is  the  origin,  what 
is  the  meaning  of  this  religious  consciousness?  and 
yet  as  of  old  the  answer  comes,  Eeligion  is  of  Cod ; 
witness  through  all  its  aberrations  to  the  Spirit  who  is 
other  than  the  visible  universe — Who  is  the  Guide 
and  End  of  our  destiny. 

I  know  of  course  that  it  will  be  said,  What  is  the 
evidence  that  this  answer  is  the  true  one  ?  How  can 
we  certainly  know  that  the  universe  is  Divine,  the  in- 
dwelling of  an  Infinite  Spirit,  under  the  government  of 
a  living  Mind  ?  Well,  if  by  evidence  is  meant  such 
evidence  as  can  be  drawn  out  and  tendered  in  a  law 
court,  then  I  admit  that  there  is  none.  Such  evidence 
fails — but  fails  by  the  very  nature  of  the  case.    It  is 


1  Frederick  Harrison  in  the  "Nineteenth  Century,"  for  June  1877. 


154 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


not  by  demonstration  that  the  finite  soul  can  appre- 
hend the  soul  of  the  universe.  But  though  we  cannot 
transcend  our  faculties,  we  can  trust  them.  Though  we 
cannot  reason  out  the  existence  of  God,  we  can  feel  it. 
And  this  consciousness  of  the  Divine  is  revelation,  the 
unveiling  of  the  heavenly  light  to  the  mind,  carrying 
with  it  its  own  evidence,  as  surely  as  sunlight  is  a 
physical  revelation  to  the  eye.  Men  tell  us  that  the  eye 
is  itself  a  product  of  the  light,  the  adaptation  through 
successive  variations  of  the  sentient  organism  to  its 
environment.  We  do  not  dispute  it.  But  neither  can 
we  doubt  that  the  spiritual  organ  too  is  the  product  of 
the  spiritual  light,  having  its  own  adaptation  to  the 
Divine  reality,  and  to  that  reality  owing  its  very 
existence.  The  witness  of  God's  Spirit  with  our 
spirits,  that  we  are  the  children  of  God — offspring  of  a 
parent  Mind,  not  products  of  a  dead,  soulless  universe, 
is  no  delusion,  no  dream,  no  superstition,  but  a  revela- 
tion to  the  soul  fitted  to  apprehend  it  as  real  as  that 
revelation  of  unity  of  law,  and  unity  of  order,  which  is 
made  to  our  intelligence  through  outward  things. 
Far  more  incredible  is  it  that  a  lifeless  universe  should 
have  produced  living  souls,  than  that  life  should  have 
its  origin  in  life,  and  thought  in  an  eternal  thought 
akin  to  its  own.^ 


iSee  "Chips  from  a  German  Workshop,"  i.  Pref.  x.,  and  "  Lectures  on 
the  Science  of  Religion,"  pp.  18-20,  by  Professor  Max  Miiller,  whose 


HUMANITY  AND  GOD. 


155 


Once  more,  then,  we  turn  to  St.  Paul  in  Athens  as 
he  stands  in  the  midst  of  that  brilliant  throng  of 
thinkers  and  wits,  and  pleasure-seekers,  and  devotees 
of  native  or  of  foreign  creeds,  as  he  seeks  to  pierce,  by 
the  power  of  his  own  earnest  soul,  to  the  deep  heart 
of  humanity.  And,  as  it  has  ever  been  God's  way 
with  us,  to  bring  home  His  Word  to  feebler  souls 
through  mightier  and  more  gifted  ones,  so  here,  in  the 
highest  historical  manifestation  of  Himself  through  His 
beloved  Son,  came  the  message  of  eternal  life  to  men. 
Those  ideas  of  unchanging  significance,  of  perennial 
moral  fruitfulness  which  are  summed  up  under  the 
sacred  terms  Incarnation,  Eesurrection,  Eternal  Judg- 
ment, and  Communion  of  the  Holy  Spirit — just  indi- 
cated in  St.  Paul's  address  to  the  Athenians,  but 
everywhere  penetrating  his  letters — have  struck  deep 
root  in  the  nature  of  man,  and  made  a  new  epoch  in 
his  history. 

"  We  are  the  offspring  of  God."  In  confirmation  of 
this  statement  St.  Paul  appeals  to  certain  of  their 
own  poets,  to  Cleanthes  and  Aratus,  and  to  the  deep 
human  consciousness  to  which  these  poets  give  utter- 
ance ;  but  who  can  doubt  that  the  Apostle  had  before 
his  mind  as  the  highest  type  of  that  Divine  Sonship, 
Jesus,  whom  he  preached  in  Athens  ?    The  revelation 


Hibbert  Lectures  in  the  Chapter  Hou?e  at  Westminster  Abbey  on  this 
and  kindred  subjects  were  proceeding  while  this  volume  was  in  the  press 


156 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


of  perfect  God  through  the  image  of  perfect  man  was 
the  Apostle's  message  to  the  men  of  Athens.  And  it 
is  the  personality  of  the  Divine  man  of  Nazareth  that 
has  changed  the  face  of  the  world.  Account  for  it  as 
we  may,  this  manifestation  of  God  in  His  Christ  ^  has 
been  the  starting-point  of  fresh  life,  a  new  creation 
out  of  which  has  sprung  the  thousand  renovating 
influences  which  are  still  at  work  in  the  bosom  of 
humanity. 

''It  has  been  reserved  for  Christianity,"  says  Mr. 
Lecky  in  his  ''  History  of  European  Morals,"  to 
present  the  world  an  ideal  character  which,  through 
all  the  changes  of  eighteen  centuries,  has  filled  the 
hearts  of  men  with  an  impassioned  love;  has  shown 
itself  capable  of  acting  on  all  ages,  nations,  tempera- 
ments and  conditions;  has  not  only  been  the  highest 
pattern  of  virtue,  but  the  highest  incentive  to  its  prac- 
tice, and  has  exercised  so  deep  an  influence  that  it 
may  be  truly  said  that  the  simple  record  of  three  short 
years  of  active  life  has  done  more  to  regenerate  and 
soften  mankind  than  all  the  disquisitions  of  philo- 
sophers and  all  the  exhortations  of  moralists.  It  has 
indeed  been  the  wellspring  of  whatever  is  best  and 


1  The  marvellous  spiritual  greatness  of  Christ  and  the  influence  which 
has  proceeded  from  it,  are  candidly  acknowledged  by  such  critics  as 
Strauss  ("New  Life  of  Jesus,"  vol.  i.  pp.223,  224,  Eng.  trans.)  and  Renan 
(••Questions  Contemporaines,"  pp._218,  232.). 


HUMANITY  AND  GOD. 


157 


purest  in  the  Cliristian  life.  Amid  all  the  sin  and 
failings,  amid  all  the  priestcraft  and  persecutions,  and 
fanaticism  that  have  defaced  the  Church,  it  has  pre- 
served in  the  character  and  example  of  its  Founder  an 
enduring  principle  of  regeneration." 

The  correspondence  of  that  Divine  life  realised  in 
humanity  to  all  our  deepest  needs  is  an  attestation  to 
its  power  which  survives  all  changes  of  thought  and 
makes  it  invulnerable  to  criticism.  To  the  poor,  the 
illiterate,  the  weak,  the  men  and  women  to  whom  this 
world  has  brought  little  save  sorrow,  the  gospel  of 
Christ  has  brought  the  spiritual  elevation  which  has 
at  once  made  sorrow  endurable,  and  lifted  the  ideal  of 
life.  Culture  as  well  as  ignorance,  when  culture  has 
been  imbued  with  religion,  and  sometimes  even  when 
it  has  not,  has  bowed  before  Jesus  Christ.  The  recog- 
nition of  His  transcendent  spiritual  greatness  by  minds 
of  the  most  opposite  order,  and  by  characters  of  the 
most  diverse  kind,  is  proof  how  deeply  this  spiritual 
greatness  has  penetrated  the  heart  of  man.  The" 
devout  Theodore  Parker,  and  the  self-torturing 
sophist  wild  Kousseau  " — all  ''fire  and  fickleness  " — are 
at  one  in  their  estimation  of  the  Christ.^  Diderot,  a 
scoffer  in  a  scoffing  age,  was  so  impressed  by  the  spell 
of  the  story  of  that  Passion  and   Death  that  he 


1  Parker,  "  Discourse  on  Matters  Pertaining  to  Religion,"  p.  242 ;  Rousseau 
'  Emile,"  Uy.  iy. 


158 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


once  flung  a  sudden  silence  over  a  brilliant  Parisian 
assembly  by  openly  avowing  it/  Even  Marat  had 
the  gospel  always  open  on  bis  table,  and  in  the 
delirium  of  his  dream  of  universal  freedom  called 
Jesus  Christ  his  Master.^  Goethe  saw  in  the  gospels 
-  ^'  the  reflection  of  a  greatness  which  emanated  from 
the  person  of  Jesus,  as  of  divine  a  kind  as  ever 
was  seen  upon  earth  .  .  .  the  divine  manifestation  of 
the  highest  principle  of  morality."  ^  John  Stuart 
Mill,  beneath  whose  cold  intellect  beat  with  sup- 
pressed force  a  consuming  passion  of  emotion,  kindles 
into  enthusiasm  as  he  speaks  of  that  "  unique  figure, 
not  more  unlike  all  his  precursors  than  all  his 
followers,"  "  a  standard  of  excellence,  and  a  model  for 
imitation,"  which  *'is  available  even  to  the  absolute 
unbeliever,  and  can  never  more  be  lost  to  humanity  " 
who  must  be  placed  ''in  the  very  first  rank  of  the 
men  of  sublime  genius  of  whom  our  species  can  boast," 
and  whose  pre-eminent  genius  "  was  "  combined  with 
the  qualities  of  probably  the  greatest  moral  reformer 
and  martyr  to  that  mission  who  ever  existed  on 
earth."  *  And  from  the  far  East  comes  the  testimony 
of  Keshub  Chunder  Sen  to  the  "noble  purpose  of 


1  Hess  apud  Stier,  "  Words  of  the  Lord,"  vii.  435  n.,  English  trans. 

2  Lamartine,  "History  of  the  Girondists,"  ii.  444,  English  trans, 

3  "Conversations  with  Eckermann,"  ii.  423  (Eng.  tr.) 

*  J,  S.  Mill,  "Three  Essays  on  Religion  :  Theism,"  pp.  253-255. 


HUMAXITY  AXD  GOD. 


159 


Christ's  noble  heart,"  and  to  "the  vast  moral  influence 
of  His  life  and  death."  ^ 

What,  then,  shall  we  say  to  confessions  such  as 
these?  When  men  so  widely  sundered  from  each 
other — men  with  no  traditional  or  conventional  predi- 
lections in  favour  of  Christian  faith — thus  think  of  the 
Christ,  we  at  least,  my  brethren,  may  well  believe 
that  still  God  speaks  ta  the  world  through  a  Son,  that 
in  this  highest  type  of  manhood  we  have  the  true 
symbol  and  the  clear  vision  of  the  Divine  nature. 
'^Ye  believe  in  God:  ye  believe  also  in  Me."  That 
awful  Presence,  whose  voice  we  have  never  heard, 
whose  shape  we  have  never  seen,  dissolves  as  faith 
strives  to  grasp  the  skirts  of  His  glory,  blinds  us  with 
His  intolerable  splendour  as  we  reach  forth  to  touch 
''His  throne  of  darkness  in  the  abyss  of  light;"  but 
the  vision  of  the  manhood  of  the  Lord  brins-s  us  back 
to  possibilities  of  worship  and  of  trust.  Of  all  incredi-  f 
bilities  the  most  incredible  is  that  a  soul  like  the 
soul  of  Jesus  should  have  arisen  in  a  soulless 
universe, — that  a  life  such  as  His  should  have  been 
possible  in  a  world  that  has  no  God, — that  a  character 
like  His  should  have  no  counterpart  above, — or  that 
the  Spirit  of  heaven,  earth,  and  sea,  "the  Power  by 


1  Sen,  "Lectures  and  Tracts,"  pp.  8,  9. 


160 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


which  planets  gravitate  and  stars  shine/' ^  should  be 
less  and  lower  than  the  Christ. 

And  this  spiritual  intuition  of  the  God  whose  glory- 
shines  in  the  Christ  carries  with  it  a  new  spring  of 
hope  for  ourselves.  For  faith  in  the  unbroken  con- 
tinuity of  the  present  and  of  the  after-life  is  involved 
in  faith  in  the  Divine  Sonship.  So,  indeed,  felt  St.  Paul, 
as  he  reasoned  in  Athens  with  all  who  met  with  him. 

He  preached  unto  them  Jesus  and  the  resurrection," — 
the  continued  life  of  all  of  which  the  heavenly  life  of 
Jesus  was  the  sign  and  the  pledge.  The  Athenians 
laughed  when  they  heard  him  speak  so  earnestly  on 
a  subject  which  appeared  to  them,  or  at  least  to  some 
of  them,  flatly  incredible.  In  light,  bantering  vein 
they  professed  to  believe  that  Jesus  and  Anastasis^ 
were  two  foreign  divinities,  until  the  Apostle's  dis- 
course left  no  room  for  doubt  that  he  was  speaking  of 
the  immortal  life,  and  of  One  who  was  dead  and  is 
alive  for  evermore.  ''When  they  heard  of  the  resur- 
rection of  the  dead  some  mocked;  and  others  said. 
We  will  hear  thee  again  of  this  matter."  They  never 
waited  to  ask  what  grounds  the  Apostle  had  for  his 
belief  that  the  spirit  of  man  is  changed  only — not 


1  Herbert  Spencer. 

2  Tov  'Irj<7ouv  /cat  rrjv  ^AvdcrTaaiv  (Resurrection),  Acts  xvii.  18.  This  view 
of  Baur,  Schaff,  Renan,  and  others  appears  to  me  probable.  On  the  other 
hand,  see  Meyer,  "  Apostelgeschichte,"  s.  312. 


HUMANITY  AND  GOD. 


161 


annihilated — by  deaths  but  dismissed  the  whole  matter 
as  simply  unworthy  of  credence  or  of  discussion. 

And  yet,  in  reality,  this  attitude  of  the  Athenian 
towards  the  truth  which  Paul  preached  is  not  native 
to  the  heart  of  man,  is  reached  only  by  the  suppression 
through  artificial  culture  of  our  deepest  instincts,  and 
is  changed  into  another  attitude  by  the  revival  of  spi- 
ritual faiths.  Such  a  revival  Christianity  was.  The 
contrast  between  the  light  mockery  of  the  Epicurean, 
or  even  between  the  graver  and  soberer  doubt  of  the 
Stoic,  and  the  earnestness  and  confidence  of  St.  Paul, 
was  due,  in  part,  to  his  vision  of  his  risen  Lord — a 
fact,  indeed,  which  rests  upon  his  own  testimony,^ 
which  testimony  as  such  cannot  be  questioned  except  by 
questioning  his  honesty — but,  above  all,  to  that  spirit- 
ual intuition  of  immortal  love  and  of  everlasting  right- 
eousness which  his  faith  in  Christ  crucified  inspired.^ 

And  as  it  was  with  St.  Paul  so  it  is  with  ourselves. 
Closely  entwined  with  that  higher  revelation  of  God 
which  the  Beloved  Son  was,  is  faith  in  immortality. 
Believe  that  the  universe  is  not  alive  but  dead — the 
home  of  no  Infinite  mind — the  garment  of  no  living 

1 1  Cor.  ix.  1 ;  1  Cor.  xv.  1-8.  "Die  Auferstehang  Christi  ein  Punkt  ist,  wo 
Geschichte  und  Dogma  sich  unmittelbar  beriihren." — Biedermann,  "  Christ- 
liche  Dogmatik,"  S.  232. 

2 And  he  said,  Nay.  father  Abraham:  but  if  one  went  unto  them  from  the 
dead,  they  will  repent.  And  he  said  unto  him,  If  they  hear  not  Moses  and 
the  prophets,  neither  will  they  be  persuaded  though  one  rose  from  the 
dead.— Words  of  the  Lord  {Luke  xvi.  30,  31). 


162 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


God — and  it  is  easy  enough  to  believe  that  conscious- 
ness is  the  mere  temporary  bubble  on  the  eternal 
surge  of  things,  flashing  out  for  an  instant  on  the 
surface  only  to 

"  Drop  from  out  this  universal  frame 
Into  that  shapeless,  scopeless,  blank  abyss, 
That  utter  nothingness  of  which  it  came." 

Else  to  faith  in  a  living  God  such  as  prophet  and 
psalmist  held,  and  the  dread  that  the  grave  cannot 
praise  Him — that  they  who  go  down  into  the  pit  can- 
not hope  for  His  truth,  becomes  a  perplexity,  an 
enigma,  a  dark  shadow  on  the  gladness  of  religion. 
Kise  higher  still — rise  to  Christ — look  out  through 
His  eyes  on  a  world  clothed  with  the  loveliness  of 
God — catch  some  reflex  of  His  deep  God-conscious- 
ness, take  into  heart  and  into  life  some  portion  of 
His  trust  and  love  for  the  Father  of  all — stand  in  the 
shadow  of  His  Cross — and  then  the  dawn  as  of  the 
Eastern  morning  is  breaking  upon  the  soul.  That 
behind  the  closed  gate  of  death  all  this  might  of  love, 
all  this  consciousness  of  goodness,  lives  no  more — that 
the  history  of  the  Christ  and  of  souls  that  are  Christ- 
like is  shattered  at  last  against  a  boundary  wall  of 
blank  nothingness — this  is  of  all  beliefs  the  most  un- 
believable. The  intuition  of  God  is  the  deepest  ground 
of  faith  in  immortality. 

For  this  faith  in  our  survival  of  that  temporary 


HUMASITY  AXB  GOB. 


163 


crisis  in  our  being  which  men  call  death  is  one  that 
ought  not  to  be  dissevered  from  those  other  faiths 
which  interlace  themselves  with  it,  and  from  which  it 
cannot  be  torn  without  hurt  and  damage  to  itself  and 
them.  The  belief  in  personal  immortality  as  it  finds 
its  deepest  ground  in  faith  in  God,  so  also  is  rooted 
in  faith  in  His  overruhng  providence  and  in  His  moral 
government.  That  judgment  of  the  world  in  right- 
eousness with  which  St.  Paul's  discourse  ended  is  the 
end  also  of  the  world's  history.  Long  before  science 
demonstrated  the  unity  of  law  and  order  Christianity 
disclosed  the  unity  of  human  destinies.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  the  idea  of  a  moral  unity  in  the 
world's  history,  an  idea  so  characteristic  of  the  post- 
Christian  as  compared  with  the  pre-Christian  ages, 
received  its  form  and  shape  from  Hebrew  and  Chris- 
tian faith.-^  In  pain  and  conflict  and  anguish  and  sin 
still  is  the  world  moving  on  to  "  one  far-ofi"  Divine 
event."  Its  history  is  not  made  up  of  a  series  of  in- 
coherent phenomena  which  come  and  go  like  shadows 
in  a  dream.  It  is  not  a  maze  without  a  plan,  with 
turnings  and  windings  which  lead  to  nothing,  a  round 
of  motions  without  definite  aim  or  issue,  in  which  all 
efforts  are  plunges  in  the  void,  the  idle  beating  of 

iLike  most  Christian  idea?,  this  also  was  foreshadowed  by  Plato,  but 
it  was  Christianity  that  made  it  an  effective  reality.  See  Baur,  "  Sokrates 
und  Christus."  Einleitung :  Abhandlungen,  S.  230,  &c  (Ed.  Zeller, 
1876). 


164 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


the  air.  It  is  a  Kingdom  of  God,  a  drama  slowly 
evolving  itself  in  national  history,  and  in  the  story  of 
our  lives  from  year  to  year.  And  as  science  has 
opened  up  fresh  vistas  into  the  past,  and  created  new 
forecasts  for  the  future,  as  we  look  backward  and  as 
we  look  forward  our  sense  of  the  breadth  and  length 
and  depth  and  height  of  God's  purpose  is  strengthened, 
though  deeper  than  plummet  ever  sounded  lies  the 
mystery  of  His  ways. 

Members  we  are  of  this  Divine  Kingdom,  each 
having  his  place,  his  function,  and  his  work.  And  in 
the  recognition  of  this  fact  the  individual  man  finds 
the  highest  sanction  of  the  sense  of  obligation  by 
which  he  is  impelled,  finds  the  completest  meaning  of 
the  responsibility  under  which  he  acts,  and  learns  the 
deepest  lesson  of  the  sacredness  of  his  work  in  the 
world.  Above  all  the  consciousness  of  what  he  owes 
to  his  fellows  is  the  consciousness  of  what  he  owes  to 
God.  The  certainty  of  a  Divine  judgment,  passed 
every  day  upon  his  thoughts  and  acts,  of  a  soul-search- 
ing light  which  penetrates  to  the  darkest  chambers  of 
his  heart,  adds  force  to  conscience,  and  makes  it  a 
power  inaction.  The  judgment  of  One  who  will  sum 
up  in  righteousness  the  spirit  and  complexion  of  the 
whole  life,  whose  decisions  cannot  be  evaded,  cannot 
be  cheated,  or  defied,  or  mocked;  the  judgment  of  One 
who  weaves  into  each  man's  destiny  his  moral  deserts, 


HUMANITY  AND  GOD. 


165 


and  will  deal  with  each  according  to  his  deeds ;  the 
judgment  of  the  Eternal  One  who  claims  us  as  His 
own,  strengthens  every  true  voice  which  pleads  for 
goodness,  and  in  hours  of  difficulty  and  of  temptation 
makes  sense  of  duty  supreme.  When  ^'  the  Power 
Eternal,  not  ourselves,  that  makes  for  righteousness,"^ 
is  believed  in,  not  as  an  abstraction,  but  as  a  Being, 
no  ethical  sanction  which  men  have  ever  framed  has 
worked  in  this  world  with  so  profound  an  influence. 

Yes,  God  ]ays  His  hand  upon  us  and  we  obey  the 
mandates  of  His  Will.  But  higher  yet  than  to  this 
law  of  conscience — finding  its  sanction  and  its  strength 
in  a  supreme  righteousness  beyond  and  above  itself — 
does  Christian  faith  lift  the  soul  that  trusts  and  loves 
the  God  whose  face  has  been  unveiled  in  Christ's : 
for  there  is  a  region  of  Divine  communion  in  which 
not  obedience  to  mandate  but  power  of  heavenly  sym- 
pathy reigns,  in  which  God's  Spirit  touches  ours,  in 
which  from  contact  with  the  God  who  is  heart  to 
heart  with  us,  we  feel  ourselves  not  servants  but  sons. 
Here  in  the  ampler  ether,  the  diviner  air  "  of  pure 
spiritual  communion  the  soul  learns  its  own  kinship 
with  God.  Here  the  uplifted  face  of  human  trust 
gazes  upwards  to  the  Eternal  Love.  Beneath  the  Per- 
fection which  broods  with  heavenly,  wing  over  the  sin 


9 


1  Matthew  Arnold, 


166 


ST.  PAUL  AT  ATHENS. 


and  evil  of  our  lives,  we  come  with  our  conscious  im- 
perfection for  healing  and  for  rest.  In  the  Everlasting 
Strength  which  stoops  so  gently  to  the  child's  helpless- 
ness we  find  our  own  strength,  and  in  our  weakness 
and  in  our  consciousness  of  dependence  the  Divine 
support  needed  for  our  sorrows  and  for  our  work.  As 
with  the  pleadings  of  our  shame  and  of  our  feebleness, 
we  ask  for  forgiveness,  He  gives  His  Holy  Spirit  to 
them  that  ask  Him — the  pardon  which  responds  to 
penitence, — the  sense  of  the  ineffable  love  which 
breathes  its  peace  into  the  heart  and  its  light  into  the 
life.  The  aspiration,  the  worship,  the  prayers  which 
rise  from  men  and  women  to  God  are  met  by  the 
answer  of  God  s  nature  to  our  needs — by  the  response 
of  His  Spirit  to  ours.  He  "  hath  made  of  one  blood 
all  nations  of  men  .  .  .  that  they  should  seek  the 
Lord  if  haply  they  might  feel  after  Him  and  find  Him, 
though  He  be  not  far  from  every  one  of  us ;  for  in 
Him  we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our  being."  With 
Thee  is  the  fountain  of  life;  in  Thy  Hght  shall  we  see 
light."  The  soul  lifted  by  the  inspiration  of  devotion 
to  seek  after  God  is  but  returning  to  its  primal  source, 
and  springs  upward  to  the  region  of  Divine  communion 
only  because  it  is  drawn  upward  by  the  Power  from 
whom  it  came. 

Between  Uncreated  Light  and  created  mind  is  such 
communion  as  this  possible  ?    The  experience  of  some 


HUMANITY  AND  GOD. 


167 


of  the  truest  and  holiest  and  sweetest  souls  that  ever 
breathed  on  this  earth  say  that  it  is.  It  is  open  to 
those  who  please  to  question  its  reality  on  the  side  of 
God ;  it  cannot  be  questioned  as  matter  of  fact  on  the 
side  of  man.  Those  who  have  themselves  thus  held 
communion  with  God  cannot  doubt  that  it  is  a  reality 
on  the  side  of  God  too.  And  corresponding  as  it  does 
with  man's  essentially  religious  nature,  it  is  one 
attestation  more  of  the  Divine  Source  from  which  we 
came  and  to  Whose  bosom  we  are  destined  to  return. 
The  soul  was  made  for  God  and  God  is  its  eternal 
home.  In  the  spiritual  experience  of  those  who  have 
risen  to  fellowship  with  the  Father  of  spirits,  faith 
finds  its  verification,  verification  of  another  order  than 
that  which  intelligence  discovers  in  the  region  of  sense, 
but  in  its  own  order,  not  less  real,  nay,  in  ultimate 
issues,  the  source  of  the  profoundest  consciousness  of 
reality.  For  under  all  the  changing  conceptions  of  the 
system  of  things  in  which  our  lot  is  cast  and  through 
which  our  higher  destinies  are  worked  out,  the  un- 
changing light  carries  its  own  witness  to  the  soul,  and 
prepares  it  afar  ofi"  for  the  eternal  righteousness  and 
kingdom. 


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